In birder lingo loggerhead shrikes are uncommon in southeastern Arizona. Some winters and springs it seems there is a shrike on every other fence post or power pole here in the grassland. A favorite field guide says they are an “uncommon to common transient throughout” southeastern Arizona. So it seems some shrikes will move about seasonally to different elevations in the borderlands. Must be nice.
The photographs are from my Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds purchased in 1970. I was inspired to bring it out of retirement after doing some birding with my family and I realized that many of the birds we were seeing had checks by their pictures in this old guide. Some of the scientific names and even common names have changed, but the birds don’t know that and they still look the same. As you can see it has been rebound…did that myself… and it’s ready to go onto the truck seat with my binoculars. Oh, and I’ve included the page with the shrike’s song. It might be fun to learn the songs and maybe sing a medley of queedle, queedle, tsurp-see, tsurp-see. You can do it! Just don’t forget to end with shack shack.
I think it’s fascinating that there are several species of winter fat found in Eurasia and Europe. That’s where the genus was first described...
Phemeranthus aurantiacus, the former Talinum aurantiacum, is now in Talinaceae, the flameflower family, “a family of two genera and 28 species.” There’s more; the...
There are a dozen species of Melampodium and I wonder which one Linnaeus was looking at when he honored Melampus with the genus name....
