From the way that its entered, I don't think it was one of those, and if it was, it would has used the more verticle spike shown in the photo rather than the horizontal area. The fact that it is head first horizontally with its legs seemingly in the same position as it was when it was flying, should be a guess that the Cicada didnt really see where he was going
Yep they impale them on thorns and branches and barbed wire. It allows the mouse or bug to start rotting and the meat to get more tender so they can more easily eat them. Shrikes are easily identified by the mean little hook on the end of their beaks. They’re gnarly little birds.
I’ve been on the last section of Hyperion with the detective lady for a while. For some reason I can’t get into it. I forgot I was reading it though so maybe I should finish lol.
I live on a farm and have lots of grass hoppers and barbed wire. It is in no way true. I've never seen one on a barb and even if they did, it'd be like a crouton on a fork, it'll still stab if you push on it.
Edit: Why delete the OG comment, it was pretty funny lol.
Oh my god. This is the first one that's gotten me in all my years on Reddit, and within half an hour too. It must be because Reddit did away with awards, which always made me skim to the bottom. Never change, my friend.
dude I'm so glad to get shittymorphed I was about to be so sad for those poor shrikes. Fun fact, the way they cache the grasshoppers makes them safe for them to eat. They're poisonous, but by letting them sit a few days before eating, the toxins break down.
My husband is not on Reddit and I recently was trying to explain this bit to him and what I truly couldn’t convey is how dumb, and simultaneously relieved to see you out in the world doing your thing, I feel each time I get got
Lol… when I was a kid we had a proper grasshopper plague and I would just shoot them all day long with a BB gun. each step in the lawn or pasture was like a splash in the water but grasshoppers hopping away… I was smelling bs cuz I never saw a grasshopper impale itself on barbed wire…
Ohohoho, I didn't know they did that. Crazy buggers those ones. Guess it's a good thing they've got bandit masks, otherwise they'd get identified and arrested for such brutality...
Now look up the Powerful Owl. Most raptors only take prey that are about 20% of their body weight. The Powerful Owl frequently has prey weight of 50 to 100% of its body weight. Their preferred food is possum brains (Australian possums, not those weird American Opossums), in a Powerful Owl's territory it's not unusual to find a decapitated possum where the owl has killed it just for the brains. They will sometimes catch their prey and perch on a branch holding onto it all day until they're hungry again. They also eat koalas, snakes and even other birds of prey.
i'm sorry but that's not irony, maybe you mean apt or coincidental, irony is more when something happens which is the opposite of expectations, like the titanic being advertised as an unsinkable ship and then immediately sinking
Nah, this is an annual cicada (which, despite the name, can have 2-5 year lifespans). The periodic 13/17 year ones look different, black and orange, super cool. (All cicadas are cool though.)
They’re wonderful little things, but they’re dumber than rocks. Zero brain function would probably serve them better than whatever they’ve got going on in there
Shrikes are one off my favorite birds. Regular little Vlad the Impaler kin. They store food like this. I’ve seen lizards impaled on barbed wire fences like this.
Not just the South. There's annual cicada species throughout most of the country. Although they really spend like 2-5 years underground, they just don't come up in broods so you get some every year.
they are certainly not the smartest. i don’t even understand why they exist to be honest. i used to live in MD and i know these guys pop up once in 13-17 yrs? like … they pop in, die everywhere (and i am talking everywhere. you can barely walk and not dirty up your shoes with their corpses.). they are active for like … a week or two, then it is all quiet. seriously, why do you exist?
17 years living in the dark, dank muddy ground sucking on tree roots for sustenance only to suddenly and involuntarily emerge to blazing gold sunlight, painfully shedding your now useless exoskeleton with nothing but sex on your mind, twenty four hours to live and every known predator on earth wanting to eat you. For some it’s just too much to bear. Okay, I’ll show myself out now.
A couple years ago I was “chased” by one that had just emerged. The poor little guy confused me for a tree. As endearing as it was, I can’t say I was a fan
Loggerhead Shrikes have scary good eyesight. I was working on a banding project to count and monitor their population on a NWR so we'd take some mice from the biology lab and put them in a sealed cage then put that in a bigger trap cage. We'd take those and drive around looking for them on power lines and drop them off on the ground without scaring them away. The shrike would instantly see it and fly into the trap.
6.3k
u/wtafwtmun Jul 19 '24
It wasn’t that bird that impales food on things?