Stock up early for the Sunday lockdown, say the shrikes

The brown shrike is easily seen during winter in and around Chennai. If one is lucky, one might see it providing for that odd bad day at office

A brown shrike seems to haunt a massive heap of axed thorny shrubs with the persistence of the Drury Lane ghost. Neatly gathered, the pile of dry prickly branches is plonked on a piece of vacant land that faces a tree-lined bund of the Selaiyur lake. This land is flanked on one side — as also on its rear side — by a coppice of tall shrubs interspersed with trees. From the perspective of having a vantage point to spot prey, the shrike should find the greenery irresistible. The woodpile is high but not as high as most shrubs in the stand. Yet the migratory shrike is drawn to the woodpile dominated by axed prosopis juliflora dominate the woodpile.

Last week, whenever this writer swung by this space, the shrike would be in attendance. If it was not, it would pop in, in a matter of minutes. It would sit quietly for long — with an air of self-importance, if one put on the anthropomorphic glasses — and occasionally sally forth to retrieve a worm from the grassy patch below. Brown shrikes are highly territorial, even in their wintering grounds, choosing a space hardly be beset with any serious counter-claims from other avians. However, making a woodpile the focal point of its attention was rather intriguing.

The preference for a thorny woodpile seems aligned with a behaviour that has earned shrikes an unflattering comparison. They are known as butcher birds, for impaling their prey the way butchers hang a slaughtered animal on a hook. What better hooks in the wild than thorns?