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red-backed shrike

noun

  1. a common Eurasian shrike, Lanius collurio , the male of which has a grey crown and rump, brown wings and back, and a black-and-white face
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Example Sentences

One is the red-backed shrike, a common autumn migrant in Egypt that often roosts in acacia trees.

That infatuation also has a destructive side, exemplified by a dwindling army of oologists, or egg collectors, who raid nests illegally — and in the case of the red-backed shrike in the 1970s, eradicated one species from the United Kingdom.

Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s.

“Even in my nightmares I couldn’t imagine that Russia would attack Ukraine,” Gavrilenko tells me when we go back to his office in the administrative wing of Askania-Nova, a spacious room full of books, a jumble of papers, and framed desk photos of a red-backed shrike and a Eurasian hobby.

From Slate

Near Rocio, also, we obtained the Red-backed Shrike, a species not previously recorded from Southern Spain.

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