"Caesar" and I, July 1975 (Family Photo)
"Caesar" and I, July 1975 (Family Photo)
xxxxx In 1975, as a boy living in rural Skowhegan, Maine I unexpectedly became a surrogate parent. One morning, near the end of a particularly violent May rainstorm, I found a shivering, half-fledged baby Loggerhead Shrike at the foot of a gnarled Elm tree in our front yard. On the ground nearby was a broken nest and one dead sibling, and I was certain that there would be no hope of survival for this chick unless I intervened. Caesar (named for a character in the then-popular "Planet of the Apes" movie series) grew rapidly on a diet of live insects, and within a week or two he was fully fledged. I recall Caesar's adult plumage coming in very quickly; in a few more weeks he had lost all traces of brown, as can be seen from the photo (unfortunately this was the only snapshot my parents ever took of Caesar). To make a long story short, I ended up with an unusual pet whose rarity I wasn't informed enough to appreciate. Caesar seemed to enjoy the attention I gave him, and he thrived for a couple of months until (sadly) falling victim to a weasel in our shed. Note: IT IS ILLEGAL AND GENERALLY A BAD IDEA TO "ADOPT" WILD BIRDS OR ANIMALS, but at that time Wildlife Rehabilitation Centers were non-existent in central Maine, or at least unknown to the general public.
xxxxx I know from personal experience that there were Loggerhead Shrikes breeding in the mid-Seventies on the Dudley Corner Road in Skowhegan, Maine. This leads to the following questions:
xxxxx At the time of this photo I was 12 and not a "birder" per se, more of a knowledgeable observer with a Golden Field Guide and a familiarity with most of the local species. I can't say that Loggerhead Shrikes were ever common in our area, but then again I didn't own a pair of binoculars and I never spent much time actually looking for them. One thing I do remember about the infrequent occasions when I saw Loggerheads was how at a distance they were virtually indistinguishable to the unaided eye from American Robins in size, shape and perching posture.
xxxxx It wasn't until 1995 that I would return with binoculars in hand to actually look for Loggerhead Shrikes. At the time I was living only 5 miles away, and I was able to regularly scour the area during that summer and the next two. Most of the local species I remembered from my childhood were still present (though oddly enough, the once-omnipresent House Sparrows were gone), along with a few that I hadn't seen before. Some "desirables", like Eastern Bluebirds, had increased in number (click here to see my Dudley Corner Road species list), but there were no Loggerhead Shrikes in any of their old haunts. When, between 1975 and 1995, did they disappear for good?
xxxxx Although in the course of twenty-odd years there has been some development and "sprawl" creeping gradually up from Route 2, the overall habitat hasn't changed dramatically. The non-residential portions of Dudley Corner Road are still primarily surrounded by hayfields (not grazing pastures), which are mowed once or twice each season. Periodically some of these fields are used to grow silage corn. There are still many areas of wild, uncleared brush along the road itself and in the buffer zone between the hayfields and the surrounding Pine woods. The lower, swampy areas are for the most part thickly clustered with Alders.
xxxxx With one exception which I will mention shortly, the main tree species along the road's south end are still the same: Sugar Maple, White Pine and Black Locust. I first remember seeing an adult Loggerhead perched atop a tall Locust tree; they undoubtedly found the long, needle-like thorns convenient for their well-known habit of impaling prey (once I found the dried remains of a baby mouse attached to a Locust thorn). There is still a dense Black Locust grove near the road on my family's property, and a variety of bird species find in it an attractive shelter from the summer heat.
xxxxx The nest that was built by the parents of "my" Shrike, however, wasn't in a Locust tree, but in a very tall American Elm, and those trees have been heavily decimated by Dutch Elm Disease, in Skowhegan as elsewhere. The Elms which once towered above our front yard are no more, though there are still a handful along Dudley Corner Road. I could find only one mention from online resources of Elms (Chinese Elm) as a specific nest site, but the fact that there were Loggerheads nesting in an American Elm on our property should at least be noted.
xxxxx Several sources point to pesticide use as a culprit in the disappearance of Loggerhead Shrikes. The former owner (through the mid-90's) of the largest tracts of land along the south end of Dudley Corner Road is said NOT to have sprayed pesticides on his fields. I can't ascertain if the current property owner uses them, although I believe he continues to maintain the original owner's lowlying, stocked trout pond, which would apparently suffer from any pesticide runoff.
xxxxxAlmost everyone will say no. Logic would seemingly dictate that if there was still a breeding Loggerhead presence in our state someone, somewhere, would have observed them. These handsome birds are in all likelihood gone forever from our neck of the woods. There are a couple of circumstances, however, which might be considered as mitigating. First, Maine is a vast state with large (though dwindling) areas of habitat similar to that in which I encountered breeding Loggerheads 28 years ago. There are still many sparsely inhabited, potentially suitable locations that are "wilder" than rural Skowhegan was even a quarter of a century ago. Second, despite the laudable increase in the practice of feeding wild birds in Maine and elsewhere, there are still not nearly enough "active" birders (people who have the time and inclination to get out into the field) to sufficiently cover such a large and geographically varied state.
xxxxxAre Loggerhead Shrikes gone? Most likely, but if only in Caesar's memory I'll continue to reach for my binoculars whenever I see a distant "Robin" perched in a treetop on some lonely country road.
