Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor)
About 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 grey shrike (L. sphenocerus) and the American loggerhead shrike (L. ludovicianus). Males and females are similar in plumage, pearly grey above with a black eye-mask and white underparts. Breeding takes place generally north of 50° northern latitude in northern Europe and Asia. Most populations migrate south in winter to temperate regions. The great grey shrike is carnivorous, with rodents making up over half its diet.
A real field recording of the Great Grey Shrike. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed Public Domain / CC0 ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland and elsewhere · xeno-canto lists 420 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- Bay-backed ShrikeLanius vittatusprofile
- Brown ShrikeLanius cristatusrecording
- Bull-headed ShrikeLanius bucephalusrecording
- Burmese ShrikeLanius collurioidesprofile
- Chinese Grey ShrikeLanius sphenocercusprofile
- Emin's ShrikeLanius gubernatorprofile
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.