Returned to Minnesota Point, park point recreation area in Duluth today and was drawn to the call of a bird that sounded at first like a sick catbird. Upon finding the birds location (near the airport on the lake side), I discovered that it was a northern shrike. I slowly approached the bird expecting it to take off at any second as is my normal expectation for this species. I was amazed by how tolerant of my presence the bird was. The shrike continued to vocalize although now it was clearly singing. A song very much like the nearby song sparrow. In fact, at one point a song sparrow was singing quite nearby and the shrike appeared to be answering or challenging it, much like song sparrows due with each other. Then the shrikes song changed again and sounded like the musical trill of the dark eyed junco! All in all, this shrike's vocal abilities were most impressive. The shrike barely opened it's bill when it sang, so that it was almost ventriloquil like. The shrike let me approach to within 15 ft. of it! During the time I watched the shrike, an eastern phoebe and a black capped chickadee also came within 15-10 ft of the bird, seemed like easy striking distance to me, but the shrike did not even seem to care. Eventually the shrike flew away and I lost sight of it. Truly cool experience, and leaves me wondering about the exact purpose of it's singing. I will post a picture of the shrike in the minnesota gallery of MOU, look under "recent". Happy Birding, and by the way, this is the third time in the last week I have observed a northern shrike at park point rec. area. On 4/17/08, there were two of them hawking for insects at the soccer field. ----Shawn Zierman.
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