The Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio) is the colourful "butcher bird" that impales prey on thorns, the male instantly recognisable with a blue-grey crown, a broad black eye mask, and a chestnut-brown back. It is a sturdily built passerine, 16–18 cm long, with a wingspan of about 24–27 cm and a weight of 25–35 grams. The male shows a blue-grey crown and nape, a broad black mask, a chestnut back, white-edged wings, and pale underparts with a faint pink tone; the female is more subdued, brownish-grey above with fine barring below and a weaker, brownish mask, while juveniles resemble the female but are even more strongly barred. The bill is powerful with a small hooked tip — a distinctly raptor-like feature.
Its call is a hard, grating "tjäck" or "tre-tre", and the song is a quiet warble that often incorporates mimicry of other birds' calls woven into a subdued, twittering strophe. Red-backed Shrikes breed across almost all of Sweden, from Skåne to Lappland, though absent from the high mountains, with a population in the tens of thousands of pairs; the species depends on open, insect-rich habitat and has declined in parts of the country as pastures have become overgrown, and it is a long-distance migrant, arriving late — typically in the latter half of May — and wintering in eastern and southern Africa. It nests in open, scrubby ground, building a sturdy cup of twigs, grass, and rootlets well hidden in a dense, often thorny bush; the female lays 5–6 eggs and does most of the incubating, over roughly 14–16 days, with chicks fledging just over two weeks after hatching. It is a skilled predator for its size, feeding chiefly on large insects such as beetles, grasshoppers, and bumblebees, but also taking lizards, frogs, small rodents, and occasionally small birds and their young — and its habit of impaling surplus prey on thorns or barbed wire, creating a larder for later, is the source of its folk name "butcher bird".
Read about this species in Swedish →