Red-backed shrike
species of bird
The red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) is a carnivorous passerine bird and member of the shrike family, Laniidae. Its breeding range stretches from Western Europe east to central Russia. It is migratory and winters in the eastern areas of tropical Africa and southern Africa.
Taxonomy
The red-backed shrike was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under its current binomial name Lanius collurio. 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 collurio is from Ancient Greek kollurion, a bird mentioned by Aristotle. The common English name "shrike" is from Middle English *schrike, *schryke, from Old English sċrīc, "shriek", from the same root as shriek and screech, referring to the bird's shrill cry or call.
Description
This 16–18 cm-long (6.3–7.1 in) migratory bird eats large insects, small birds, frogs, rodents and lizards. Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches, and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder." This practice has earned it the nickname of "butcher bird."
The general colour of the male's upper parts is reddish. It has a grey head and a typical shrike black stripe through the eye.
“Red-backed shrike” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Red-backed, shrike and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26671. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1758.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red-backed shrike” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.