"I HAVE just returned from a drought-stricken suburb where only the tangled grey of spiky shrubs relieved the flat, baked brown of the landscape. The trees were few and far between, the grass was withered and such life as there was clustered, open-mouthed, around a few deep wells. Even the crows and goats seemed reluctant to leave the delightful shade of the village neem trees, which were in flower, but walking across the desiccated open I found a drier life in possession. Brown grasshoppers rose from the brown, sparse grass underfoot, there were finch-larks in the fields, bloodsuckers ran splay-legged to cover the fences at my approach and, at long intervals, big Grey Shrikes sat austerely on the bush tops, very much at home in that desolate setting.
A pair was together, from which I concluded that these stern birds had weakened already under a seasonal urge. The Grey Shrike loves its own company and keeps relentless vigil over its territory, allowing no kith and kin to violate its privacy. But then summer comes spring is not far behind, and for a while it relaxes its strictness and suffers a mate. It sings a sweet, tinkling song and then that no one would expect from looks and habitual laconism; but even then it is not given to flutterings and fluffy displays; it comports itself with a dignity and restraint exceptional in the love-silly world of birds.
I always thought this shrike one of the most aloofly distinguished of our birds. There is the hint of silver in the grey of its plumage and the big, square head,the top-heavy build, the heavy, hooked bill and broad, black eye-stripe all convey not only the suggestion that its love of thorn-scarred wastes and its unsociable habits confirm. Other shrikes that live in somewhat similar places have similar natures, but somehow the tribe has earned for itself an undeserved reputation for blood lust.
These are the "butcher birds", a tribe repugnant to the sentiment of Western writers of popular history. Quite recently I read an American description of a typical shrike, where the bird was damned with all the lurid exaggeration that the writer could command, as kill-crazy, callous, bloodthirsty murderer that lurked in bushes and throttled innocent little birds. I have never been able to understand the importing of human concepts of virtue and morality into a study of natural history, in all seriousness, but even granting that this is good form, I cannot see how shrikes are any the more bloodthirsty than other birds that watch for their prey from a perch and pounce down on them.
Such birds usually hunt insects or other small creatures, but occasionally they tackle more substancial prey, weak enough to be overpowered but not sufficiently small to be swallowed in a mouthful or killed at once-nestlings, large insects with tough shells, or lizards. Birds better equipped for rapine, sparrow-hawks for instance, can kill sizeable prey quickly, but shrikes have to use much force to still the struggles of the occasional large victims, and there is no question of cruelty or blood lust involved. In fact, far from killing madly in excess of their needs, shrikes have developed the prudent habit of impaling surplus catch on thorns, against a rainy day, and it is from this peculiarity and not from their murderous violence that the name "butcher birds" has come to them.
Incidentally, I have never seen the Grey Shrike's larder in the warm plains, though I saw a lizard neatly impaled by one of these birds in the hill station. The number of things I have not seen are very many, and proves nothing, but it is possible that in the hotter plains, where putrefaction is rapid, shrikes are not much given to stocking larders?"- M.Krishnan
*Sketch of the bird not reproduced.
This was first published on 13 April 1952 in The Sunday Statesman
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