This Tiny Songbird Rolls Its Head to Break Its Victim’s Neck

There are places in the southern United States where the roadsides are fenced with barbed wire, and the wire is adorned with corpses. The carcasses belong to lizards, rodents, small birds, and even snakes, all impaled on the sharp prongs. These grisly dioramas are the work of the unlikeliest of butchers: a small bird called the loggerhead shrike.

The shrike is a hawk trapped in the body of a finch. From a distance, it looks like any other songbird, perched on a high vantage point. But from those perches, the two-ounce from the University of Connecticut. “I personally think they’re very badass.”