Hi all,

This past Sunday my wife and I witnessed something we had never seen
before--a Northern shrike chasing a small bird at high altitude. We were
up at the West 90, north of the Skagit Flats. The shrike intitally
mounted his attack from the usual low elevation vantage point, in this
case a short (6' tall) tree. But in a chase that lasted 2-3
minutes, the shrike repeatedly pursued the smaller, unidentified bird,
twice soaring over 100 feet and once over 200 feet! The shrike was most
"successful" in stooping on the smaller bird. It might be several feet
to a few yards behind the bird, but on two occasions in which it stooped,
it zoomed almost instantaneously to the smaller birds tail. It had a
somewhat falconequese profile when it stooped. The white wing patches,
akin to those of an acorn woodpecker, were very striking, even at a
distance of 1/4 of a mile.

The northern shrike has a pretty formidible arsenal of hunting modes. We
are all familiar with its hunting from a perch, making a beeline toward
its prey. But I have also seen them hovering in place like an American
kestrel or a White-tailed Kite. I believe it hovers when it is hunting
mice or other small mammals, since in those occasion that I witnessed
it, it was over open cultivated (and ostensibly birdless) fields.

By the way, I cannot tell you the result of the chase--the two birds
disappeared into the cloudy distance, approximately 1/2 mile from where
the chase began.

Tom Cotner
Seattle
tcotner at u.washington.edu