Bird recalls seeing in the wild the gruesome sight of a thornbush decorated with the skins of mice. The shrike's predisposition to fighting means that they have to be housed in individual cages except in mating season, when the changes to their hormones allow a couple to court, mate, make a nest and raise the young together. Clearly, saving the shrike is a labour of love. And the labour seems to be paying off. Bird is pleased with the response from funding agencies, the media and the public.
Releases have yet to occur.
The strategy used by the ASCC and the Metro Zoo is to breed in captivity two colonies, large enough to allow for experimental releases into the wild. At present, Bird has 24 birds, while the zoo has 25. Sometime in the year 2000, the two institutions will try a variety of methods of release such as adding eggs or captive bird nestlings to active nests in the wild, pairing a single captive- bred bird with a wild bird or placing captive breeding pairs in large, outdoor aviaries where they will be protected from predators as hawks and raccoons and fed, at least initially, live food. Unlike the peregrines, who know virtually no enemies, shrikes are vulnerable to all sorts of ground mammals, such as raccoons, and birds of prey, like the hawk and owl. So Bird knows that saving this small bird will be harder than saving the peregrine.