The steppe grey shrike (''Lanius excubitor pallidirostris'') is a large songbird species in the shrike family ( Laniidae) native to

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

and parts of northern China, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Formerly considered a subspecies of the southern grey shrike (''Lanius meridionalis'') complex, it is now classified as a subspecies of 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 ...

Taxonomy

The steppe grey shrike was described by the American ornithologist

John Cassin John Cassin (September 6, 1813 – January 10, 1869) was an American ornithologist from Pennsylvania. He worked as curator and Vice President at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and focused on the systemic classification of the Acad ...

in 1851 under its current binomial name ''Lanius pallidirostris''. The generic ''Lanius'' is Latin for a "butcher" and the specific ''pallidirostris'' combines the Latin ''pallidus'' for "pale" and ''-rostris'' for "billed". The species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

References

Steppe grey shrike Steppe grey shrike Birds of Central Asia Steppe grey shrike {{bird-stub