Exoneration of the shrike

Few birds get worse press than shrikes (Laniidae). Sift through popular articles on them – even news features in scientific publications – and you will almost assuredly run across words such as “assassin”, “murderer”, “sadistic”, “vicious”, “macabre”, “gruesome”, and the like. It's all because these predatory birds commonly cache the prey they kill – which might include insects, lizards, small birds, mice, and so forth – by impaling their captures on thorns; you might see several items in a “larder” waiting to be consumed. These thorns also serve as anchors, making it easier for the birds to tug at the carcasses and pull off bite-sized pieces. Both are practices we condemn as distasteful. Moreover, shrikes are not raptors, but songbirds. Apart from the little hook at the end of their upper bill (Figure 1), there is nothing in their appearance to suggest they would prey upon anything bigger than a moth. This we interpret as contemptuous duplicity, made all the worse by the shrikes’ ability to lure other passerines toward them by mimicking their songs. Our sensibilities injured, we gave shrikes a bad name…and it's high time we ended this age-old wrong.

Take for example the Sherborne Missal, an exquisitely illustrated liturgical book crafted around the year 1400 for the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary's in Sherborne, southern England. One of the many birds depicted in its pages is a gray shrike (likely Lanius excubitor or meridionalis), clearly labeled as a waryghanger. In Medieval English, this apparently meant something like “suffocating angel”, a name clearly fitting for a creature with a benevolent appearance, yet one that is deceitful and murderous. It may have derived, however, from the Old English wearg (criminal) and a suffix connotating the diminutive: that is, a little villain, an appellative that wastes no time dwelling on imagery and metaphor (The Compleat Birder, https://tinyurl.com/2abrfwrb). Either way, the bird's “false charm” as a songbird, and the exceptional treatment of its prey, must have been known (and disliked) long before the Missal was written. Small wonder that the word shrike (which, thank goodness, at some point gained ascendency over waryghanger) would eventually, and misogynistically, become used to denote a wife who treated her husband badly.

The shrikes’ reputation was no better during the early Renaissance in Italy. In the Baptism of Christ (circa 1470–75) painted by Andrea del Verrocchio, with a little help from a young apprentice named Leonardo da Vinci, a red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) is seen leaving the scene as John the Baptist pours water over Christ's head. The bird's reputation for cruelty involving thorns here symbolizes the crown of the same that Christ will later be forced to wear during His agony (Nat Hist Sci Atti Soc it Sci nat Museo civ Stor nat Milano 2021; 2: 59–64). It's only a small stretch to suggest the bird's retreat also represents the flight of evil from good. Shrikes just can't catch a break.

In Pakistan, half a world away, shrikes also have a bad rap. In 2016, an article in the December 9th edition of The Friday Times newspaper tells how some rural people of the Malakand Division, in the country's northwest, consider the long-tailed shrike (Lanius schach) to be a sinful creature, its forebears having placed thorns (yes, it's those thorns again) in the path of an Islamic saint, an evil aimed at tormenting him, and presumably impeding his work. The bird's ability to mimic also gets it into trouble, this time by falsely singing the call to prayer (https://tinyurl.com/9hsv3vjm). It is also blamed for setting fire to a mosque and for stealing kohl (to paint the black strip around its eyes) from Heaven. Who would have thought such a pretty, harmless-looking creature could be so bad?

But of course, when shrikes impale their dispatched prey, they are either simply storing it up for leaner times, or, if they are males, hoping that a bigger stash will win a female's heart (which it does: Auk 1989; 106: 418–21). When they use those thorns as food anchors, there is no macabre intent. Rather, they are putting them to ingenious use. Unlike raptors, shrikes do not have talons with which to firmly grip their dinner; they use a tool! And when they sing another bird's song, they are only following a hunting strategy, and who blames a lion for being a good stalker? Shrikes are not serial killers, they have no psychopath's need to display grizzly trophies on spikes (although I am not sure what those captured lizards and voles might think), nor is there overwhelming evidence that they willingly injure holy persons’ heads or feet. Shrikes do not have a problem; we do. We are, of course, projecting upon them the worst behavior we recognize in our own species: lying, cheating, murdering, and macabre perversion (really, was Vlad the Impaler never mentioned in those above popular articles?).

The time has come to right our wrong and clear the shrikes’ name. But just one thing; please, don't change it to waryghanger!