UK breeding: 1-3 pairs
UK passage: 250 birds
Family: Shrikes
Adult male red-backed shrikes have a chestnut back, mantle and scapulars. The upperwings are black with chestnut edges on the feathers, and sometimes a small white patch on the base of the primaries. The rump and uppertail coverts are pale grey while the rest of the tail is black is black with a white base on the central pair of rectrices. The outer rectrices have white outer webs. The underparts are pale pink and the under tail coverts are white.
The head is pale grey, with a white throat and a black lower forehead and a conspicuous black eye mask that runs from the lores to the back of the ear coverts. The hooked bill is black with a paler or slate grey base outside of breeding season, the eyes are dark brown, and the legs and feet are dark brown or black.
Female red-backed shrikes are similar to males but are paler and duller. The upperparts are brown, the rump and uppertail coverts are grey, and the tail is dark brown with white edges and tips. On the upperwing the edges to the feathers are duller than the males. The underparts are cream with a pale pink wash on the side of the breast and flanks with black vermiculations.
On the head the crown is grey-brown, the lower forehead and supercilium are white and the ear coverts are brown. The bill and legs are paler than the male.
Juveniles resemble the female with duller upperparts which are rufous or buffy brown with heavy dark bars. The underparts are more heavily vermiculated, and the bill has a yellow base.
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Red-backed shrikes breed between May and July. They are monogamous and produce 1 or 2 broods per season. They breed in hedgerows, heathland, parkland, and young conifer plantations in open landscapes with a few trees. The male builds the nest which is placed low down in a dense thorny bush or shrub. It is a cup-shaped structure made of stems, roots, grasses, lichen, and other plant matter and lined with softer grass, moss, and fur.
Red-backed shrikes lay 3-8 pale green, olive, pink, or buff eggs with reddish-brown, olive, or grey spotting concentrated at the larger end, which are incubated mainly by the female for 13-16 days. Chicks are naked after hatching and they are brooded by the female for the first week and fed by the male. After that both parents feed them. They fledge at 14-16 days or a few days longer if the weather is poor. They can catch insects about 2 weeks later and are fully independent after another 20 days. They reach sexual maturity at 1 year.
Red-backed shrikes eat mainly insects but also other invertebrates as well as small mammals, in particular voles, birds, and reptiles. They will also eat berries in late summer and autumn.
They hunt from prominent perches and catch insects on the wing and kill larger prey with a sharp peck to the back of the head. They then take the prey to a ‘larder where it is impaled on thorns or barbed wire, or wedged in the fork of a tree or bush to be eaten later.
Red-backed shrikes are best looked for on passage in May and June and from August to October. They can be spotted on the south and east coasts as far north as northern Scotland.
The red-backed shrike is sometimes known as the “wariangle” and “worrier”, from an old Germanic word meaning “choking angel”.
