The Iberian grey shrike (''Lanius meridionalis'') is a member of the shrike family. It is closely related to the

great grey shrike The great grey shrike (''Lanius excubitor'') is a large and predatory songbird species in the shrike family (Laniidae). It forms a superspecies with its parapatric southern relatives, the Iberian grey shrike (''L. meridionalis''), the Chinese ...

, ''Lanius excubitor'', and its plumage is generally similar to the great grey shrike apart from the differences noted below. The Iberian was previously considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...

with the great grey; where they co-occur, they do not interbreed and are separated by choice of

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

.Sangster, George; Knox, Alan G.; Helbig, Andreas J. & Parkin, David T. (2002): Taxonomic recommendations for European birds. ''

Ibis The ibises () (collective plural ibis; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word ...

'' 144(1): 153–159.
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Taxonomy and systematics

The genus name, ''

Lanius ''Lanius'', the typical shrikes, are a genus of passerine birds in the shrike family Laniidae. The majority of the family's species are placed in this genus. The genus name, ''Lanius'', is derived from the Latin word for "butcher", and some ...

'', is derived from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

word for "

butcher A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesale food establishm ...

", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits. The specific ''meridionalis'' is

for "southern". The common English name "shrike" is from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

''scríc'', "shriek", referring to the shrill call. It is resident in southern

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. It is slightly smaller and darker than the great grey shrike, and prefers dry open country.

Behaviour and ecology

This medium-sized

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

eats large

insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...

, small birds and rodents. Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches, and impales corpses on

thorns Thorn(s) or The Thorn(s) may refer to: Botany * Thorns, spines, and prickles, sharp structures on plants * ''Crataegus monogyna'', or common hawthorn, a plant species Comics and literature * Rose and Thorn, the two personalities of two DC Com ...

or barbed wire as a "

larder A larder is a cool area for storing food prior to use. Originally, it was where raw meat was larded—covered in fat—to be preserved. By the 18th century, the term had expanded. Now a dry larder was where bread, pastry, milk, butter, or cooked m ...

References

Bibliography

Identification

* Jorma Tenovuo & Juha Varrela (1998) Identification of the Great Grey Shrike complex in Europe ''

Alula The alula , or bastard wing, (plural ''alulae'') is a small projection on the anterior edge of the wing of modern birds and a few non-avian dinosaurs. The word is Latin and means "winglet"; it is the diminutive of ''ala'', meaning "wing". The al ...

'' 4(1): 4 - 11 *Clement, Peter, and Tim Worfolk (1995) Southern and eastern Great Grey Shrikes in northwest Europe ''

Birding World ''Birding World'' was a monthly birding magazine published in the United Kingdom. It was the magazine of the Bird Information Service, based at Cley next the Sea, Norfolk. With the publication of issue No. 26/12 in January 2014, ''Birding World'' ...

'' 8(8) 300-309

External links

Ageing and sexing (PDF; 4.7 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:shrike, grey, Iberian

Iberian grey shrike The Iberian grey shrike (''Lanius meridionalis'') is a member of the shrike family. It is closely related to the great grey shrike, ''Lanius excubitor'', and its plumage is generally similar to the great grey shrike apart from the differences not ...

Birds of Southern Europe