Butcher Bird Spotlight

Each of the animals at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a story. They are animals that for one reason or another cannot be released or returned to the wild. The safest place for them is in captivity, and here they have the opportunity to educate thousands of visitors each year.

This is Lindsay, our Loggerhead Shrike. She was hatched in July of 2002 with a deformed beak. Her upper beak does not grow as it should, which allows her lower beak to become too overgrown. Her beak requires routine trims by the wildlife staff. If she lived in the wild she would not be able to hunt food properly and would not survive.




In the wild she would normally use her hooked beak to kill mice, birds and insects and then impale them on thorny branches to easily rip them apart. Shrikes are given the nickname “Butcher Bird.”

The Loggerhead Shrike was common in Ohio in the 1930s but their populations began to decline due to habitat loss. Sightings are rare in Ohio today.


Melissa Terwilliger, CMNH Wildlife Specialist