The brown shrike (Lanius collurio) is a little larger than the house sparrow and somewhat more slender. It is 16 to 18 cm long. The female and the male are differently colored. The female has dark brown wings, a gray rump, a black tail, and a grayish-brown head. It has a black bill, gray legs, and a brown stripe across the eyes. Her dirty yellowish-white belly is speckled with a gray, scale-like pattern. Juvenile brown shrikes also have a similar protective pattern as the female. The male is more contrastingly colored, we will not confuse it with any other species. The head is ash-gray in color with a sharp edge that transitions into a brownish back, which continues over the gray rump to the black tail. At the base of the tail, on each side there is a white patch, especially noticeable during flight. The light-colored male's belly is of a uniform brownish-pink color, and his eyes are hidden by a pronounced black eye mask. The stout black bill is, as with the female, pointed and curved downward at the tip.
The brown shrike is a characteristic bird of traditional cultural landscapes, where blooming meadows intertwine with pastures and with impenetrable hedgerows. In such a living environment it finds a sufficient number of insects, which are its favorite food, to feed itself and rear its brood. It nests from May to June. A fairly large nest, woven from grasses and moss and lined with animal hair, it hides in dense, thorny shrubs. Insects are not the only prey it spots from its perch on top of a shrub, a fence, or bean plant. It pounces at any animal it can overpower, be it an amphibian, a reptile, a small mammal or a bird. The brown shrike is a migratory bird that winters in tropical Africa. It returns to our region only in May, as there is never enough sun and heat.
Estimates in Europe indicate that over 6,000,000 pairs of brown shrikes nest there, but its habitat is strongly dependent on human activity and management. If pastures and meadows are neglected, they quickly overgrow with shrubs and gradually turn into forest, where the brown shrike cannot cope and thus disappears from such areas. On the other hand, it is threatened by the intensification of agriculture with excessive fertilization and mowing several times a year, which strongly negatively affects the abundance of its prey. The brown shrike on its favorite perch thus indicates a healthy ecosystem. In Slovenia we treat it as a vulnerable species.
