Long-Tailed Shrike

A predatory songbird of open country and scrub across South and East Asia, this shrike hunts from exposed perches such as fence posts, wires, or bare branches, dropping to the ground to take insects, small reptiles, and occasionally small birds. Look for its long, graduated tail flicked from side to side and its habit of impaling prey on thorns or barbed wire as a food cache. It is most active at dawn and dusk and is a familiar sight in agricultural land, hedgerows, and forest edges outside the breeding season when many populations are migratory.