Did you know... To save a meal for later, Northern Shrikes may use a sharp object (barbed wire, a stick or something similar) to impale/hook/hang the food. 
In meat science training programs, people learn that hanging meat is the first stage of "good butchery" that ultimately leads to the meat becoming tender.
Who did it first, the bird or the human?

Dawn Hewitt

Dawn is a field naturalist for Zeiss Optics, and writes posts for Zeiss Birding social media. She is also the Spotlight columnist and managing editor for the new BWD Magazine, and is the former editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and Watching Backyard Birds. She was bitten by the birding bug in 1979 during an ornithology class at West Virginia University. Consequently, many of the first birds on her life list were found in West Virginia. While working as a copy editor and reporter for The Herald-Times newspaper in Bloomington, Indiana, she was also the newspaper’s weekly birding columnist.

She is a past president of Sassafras Audubon Society, in Bloomington, and a founding friend of Friends of Goose Pond, based in Linton, Indiana.

She has been to all 50 states, and birded in most of them!

Let's Go Birding! 04/27/2027 06:00 am 242 Days

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