Woodchat Shrike
Lanius senator
Very distinctive black-masked shrike with a red crown and nape. Stocky and big-headed, with prominent white wing patches. Juveniles are pale gray and scaly. Found in open areas with scattered bushes and trees, especially old orchards, where they sit on prominent perches; uses acacia savanna on non-breeding grounds. Song is a long jumble of various vocal elements, including warbles, whistles, rasping calls, and mimicry. Gives long series of harsh, dry calls.
Identification
The woodchat shrike is 17–19 cm (6.7–7.5 in) in overall length which is slightly larger than a red-backed shrike. The male is a striking bird with black and white upper parts, a chestnut crown and pure white underparts. The race L. s. badius of the western Mediterranean lacks the large white wing patches. In the female and young birds, the upperparts are brown and white and vermiculated. Underparts are buff and also vermiculated.
Taxonomy
The woodchat shrike was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Lanius senator. Linnaeus based his description on the "red headed butcher-bird" that had been described and illustrated in 1734 by the English naturalist Eleazar Albin in the second volume of his A Natural History of Birds. Linnaeus mistakenly specified the type locality as "Indiis". This was corrected to the River Rhine in Germany by Ernst Hartert in 1907. The genus name, Lanius, is derived from the Latin word for "butcher", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits. The specific senator is Latin for "senator", so-named because its chestnut cap recalled the colour of the stripe on the toga of a Roman senator. The common name "woodchat" is an Anglicisation of German waldkatze, literally "woodcat", and "shrike" is from Old English scríc, "shriek", referring to the shrill call.<p>A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2019 found that within the genus Lanius the woodchat shrike was sister to the lesser grey shrike (Lanius minor), a migratory species which breeds in the Mediterranean and steppe regions of the southern Palearctic. The two species diverged from each other around 3.9–5.0 million years ago.<p>Three subspecies are recognised:
- Scientific name
- Lanius senator
- Authority
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Laniidae
- Genus
- Lanius
Range and habitat
The breeding range of the woodchat shrike is in southern Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The range extends from Portugal to Greece, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and in the Arabian Peninsula including Bahrain and Kuwait, and from Mauritania and Western Sahara in northern Africa to Libya. This bird overwinters in tropical central Africa, its winter range extending from Senegal to Sudan and Ethiopia in the east and southwards to Gabon. This species often overshoots its breeding range on spring migration, and is a rare, but annual, visitor to Great Britain. The Balearic race badius has occurred in Britain around four times as a vagrant, and has also been recorded once in Ireland.
- Breeding range
- PAL : sw
- Non-breeding range
- c AF
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
Migration pattern: Complete migrants.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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