Southern Grey Shrike

[Tushar Dixit]

Southern Grey Shrike from this week's birding. Shrikes are called as "khatik" meaning butcher in Marathi due to their feeding habit of catching insects and small vertebrates and impaling their bodies on thorns. This helps in tearing the flesh into managable pieces and also helps as a storage. The habit may be an adaptation for having a pointy beak but lack of powerful talons as in raptors.

Clicked in Pune with EOS 7D with 400 f/5.6L @ f/7.1, 1/100, ISO 400. Basic PP and some highlights toned down. C&C most welcome!

[Sandesh Astgikar]

Nice eye contact and nice catch.
Beautiful the best shrike foto i have ever seen

[Sandesh Astgikar]

Good post of the day

[Bibhav Behera]

Nice image. The eye contact is nice. Wish there were some more catchlight t make the eye stand out in the black band. The background looks nice. A very pretty bird with a brutal reputation <Ref: Butcher Bird>
Thanks for sharing.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Very well captured. The pose and the details are nice. Nice clean background. Thanks for sharing the information. Look forward to more.

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Very neatly exposed.Nice pose and excellent BG. shrikes in general seem to have bad reputation .The bay backed is called Demon bird (Asurakili) in malayalam.

TFS
roopak

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Wow! Beautifully done Tushar, agree with Bibhav on catch-light in the eye would have been a stunner. The shutter speed is quite low but image is quite sharp. Seems all Shrikes have a bad reputation never knew about it. Thanks for info Tushar and Roopak.
tfs

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The image has come out well. The background is nice. I agree that a better light angle would have done wonders to the eye. However, it is not something that can be helped. Overall, well done. Thanks for sharing.