
Louisiana loggerhead shrike gets in on bacon-mania
Posted onJanuary 20, 2020byHazel Wheeler|Loggerhead Shrike, News and Events, Species at Risk
What is the Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Recovery Program? After a precipitous drop in the wild eastern loggerhead shrike population in the 1990s, Environment Canada invited Wildlife Preservation Canada to join the multi-partner recovery effort in 2001. Since then, the wild population size has fluctuated. Studies have shown that although the recovery effort has prevented the species from disappearing from Canada, more work is required to identify and address the causes of the species’ decline. WPC works to prevent the endangered eastern loggerhead shrike from disappearing by building the wild population in Ontario, and studying the species to learn more about the threats they face.
From Dr. Than Boves, University of Arkansas:
The bacon craze of the past two decades may have reached a climax with a recent observation of a predatory bird incorporating bacon into their diet in Louisiana. The Loggerhead Shrike, known also as the ‘Butcher Bird’ for its habit of impaling its prey (often mice, frogs, snakes, or insects) on sharp projections (such as thorns or barbed wire), is a predatory songbird that is of conservation concern because of severe population declines over the past 50 years.
Although famous for impaling a variety of freshly killed prey items, recently a Loggerhead Shrike in Port Allen, LA was observed “capturing” and impaling a very different type of “prey”: a piece of preserved and fully cooked bacon that had been discarded in the parking lot of a hotel. This observation represents the first documented case of a shrike incorporating a human food item in their larder (a location where shrikes store the remains of their disposed victims, often for future consumption), but it is unknown if such behavior is more common than currently assumed, especially in urban areas in the southeastern US where shrikes (and bacon) are relatively abundant.
Reference: Alexander J. Worm, Than J. Boves “Bringing Home the Bacon: A Lanius ludovicianus (Loggerhead Shrike) Caches an Anthropogenic Food Item in an Urban Environment,” Southeastern Naturalist, 18(4), (13 December 2019).
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