Red-backed Shrike

Voice

The song is soft and chattering with many accurate imitations of other species — usually audible only at close range. The alarm call is more obvious: a hard, chacking tchek-tchek.

Identification

Male: blue-grey head with a broad black mask, chestnut mantle and wings, creamy to pinkish underparts and a black-and-white tail. Female and juvenile: warm brown with fine crescent-shaped barring on breast and flanks and a brown mask. All plumages show a strong, slightly hooked bill.

Confusion species

Females and young birds can recall Woodchat Shrike or, among rare visitors, Brown Shrike. Note tail colour and the extent of the vermiculation. Great Grey Shrike is much larger and longer-tailed, and winters here instead.

Habitat

Small-scale, insect-rich landscape with thorny scrub: hawthorn and bramble on heathland, natural transitions between woodland and open ground, extensively managed pasture and hedgerow country. The essential combination is hunting perches, bare ground and large insects.

Range and movements

Breeds from Spain to Russia; winters in southern Africa, using an eastern migration route. In the Netherlands the strongholds are Drenthe (Bargerveen, Dwingelderveld), Noord-Brabant, Limburg and the Wadden islands.

• Breeding (summer)
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Mid-May to late July, in the middle of a warm day when insects are active — unlike songbirds, this species rewards a late start. Scan bush tops and barbed wire; anyone who finds a larder with beetles or lizards is almost certainly in an occupied territory.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern), but long in steep decline in the Netherlands and still a Red List species there. Numbers in Drenthe have recovered thanks to restoration of heathland with scrub and insect-rich, nutrient-poor margins.