10/15/2026
Go shrike go!
There’s something pretty special about following the journey of a single endangered animal from birth to release to the wild… and in this case, from egg to adult flying over the alvars!
The endangered eastern loggerhead shrike pictured here, dark blue over silver:orange over white (identified by the unique bands on her legs), hatched all the way back on April 27th at the 's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute - one of our amazing conservation breeding partners. The SCBI team cared for this little bird (and her parents) until she was ready to take the next step in her journey: heading North to Ontario, Canada.
That’s where WPC’s Shrike team comes in! We drive down to the United States in a large box van, meet the SCBI team in Virginia for a bird transfer, and then drive all the way back up to Ontario to one of our two release sites in Napanee and Carden, where the birds will spend time learning hunting skills and acclimatizing to their wild environment in outdoor enclosures.
Then comes the release day. For the birds in Napanee, that was August 18! The day we watched this little bird (and her friends) enter the wild for the first time. She then spent nearly two weeks hanging around the release site before leaving for fall migration. But that wasn't the end of her story with us…
We received word that she had been spotted again, 47 kilometres away in Prince Edward County!
Thanks to Paul, a keen birder in the area, we not only received confirmation of this bird’s travels, but we also received these beautiful photos.
Eastern loggerhead shrikes that breed in Ontario migrate south for the winter, east of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, and typically only heading as far south as Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. So this little one has officially started her journey.
Now we’ll be waiting on the edge of our seats to see if this bird is spotted again further south. And who knows? Maybe we’ll even spot her next spring when some of our birds return to their breeding grounds!
More about WPC's Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Program:
After a precipitous drop in the wild eastern loggerhead shrike population in the 1990s, Environment Canada invited Wildlife Preservation Canada to lead the multi-partner recovery effort in 2003. Since then, the wild population size has fluctuated. WPC works to prevent the endangered eastern loggerhead shrike from disappearing by building the wild population in Ontario, and studying the species to learn more about the threats they face. Breeding these special songbirds in large enclosures, we transfer them to their natural habitat where the young birds can learn key survival skills before release. To date, we have bred and released more than 1,500 shrikes which we can say without a doubt has prevented this feisty songbird from disappearing from Canada's grasslands.
