With the appearance of a snowy owl Wednesday, the suite of predators that visit the Red River Valley from the north is complete.
The snowy owl was a first of the season for me, and I've had only one other report. That came from the Roseau, Minn., area, well north of Grand Forks.
My owl was on a telephone pole just west of Gilby, N.D. - about where I expect to see snowy owls each November. This specimen, in fact, seemed a little late to me, just as winter itself has taken its time to reach us this year.
The Red River Valley is among the best spots in the Lower 48 states to observe snowy owls. I've heard it said that the area northwest of Grand Forks - out by the landfill and the lagoons - is surpassed only by Boston's Logan airport as a magnet for migrating snowy owls.
The snowy owl is a large and obvious bird, Except for its white and black plumage, it makes little attempt to hide itself, and it is frequently encountered perched in the open on dirt clumps, rock piles, fence posts, hay bales, power poles and sometimes, rooftops.
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Some winters, it is more frequent than others. One memorable season, as many as 60 snowy owls were seen routinely in a single day. So far, this doesn't seem to be such a year.
This is a little curious, since both rough-legged hawks and Northern shrikes seem to me to be more numerous this year than most.
Last week's column considered the rough-legged hawk, "the great hawk of the North."
Northern shrikes are small and inconspicuous compared to the snowy owl and the rough-legged hawk. They're about the size of a robin, though they are slimmer and markedly more streamlined.
At first glance, the shrike hardly looks like a predator, but it is grimly efficient at its business. Its business is capturing small prey, mostly mice and voles but occasionally small birds, as well. These are impaled on thorns of bushes or on barbed wire, which the shrike uses as a kind of refrigerator.
This behavior has earned the shrike the sobriquet "Butcher Bird."
The shrike is a grayish bird, though it appears almost white in flight. The belly is lighter than the back and a facial mask and the wings are black, showing white patches in flight.
Young birds can be told from adults. They are patterned similarly, but young are more brown than adults. Bird count data indicates that young-of-the-year make up about a quarter of wintering shrikes in the northern U.S.
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A closely related species, the loggerhead shrike, occurs here in summer and occasionally one sticks around well into winter. Thus, any shrike seen in winter is worth a second look. At a distance, perhaps the best field mark is the relatively small head of the Northern shrike compared to the rest of the body. The loggerhead seems big-headed.
At close range, the facial mask of the loggerhead appears thicker and fuller.
By far, the largest number of shrikes seen in winter are Northern shrikes, but this doesn't prevent disputes about identification, even among experienced birders.
The best way to find shrikes is to seek out areas of overgrown grassland with low bushes or dilapidated fences lines. The shrike hunts by flitting from one observation point to the next, and when seated at the top of a bush or small tree, it looks rather like a balloon attached to a string.
The flight is bouncing and diagnostic of shrikes (though it won't help you separate the species from one another).
Northern shrikes are birds of the wilderness, and they occur very thinly across the extreme north of North America and in a wider belt across Europe and Asia.
Probably, they are more concentrated in our area in winter, when they can occur in quite close proximity to each other, than they are on their nesting grounds, where a single pair may defend a square mile or more of territory - and territories may be many miles apart.
Last week, I saw three shrikes within a single township on a single day - a lot of shrikes, I thought.
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Jacobs is publisher and editor of the Herald.
