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