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fussy eater or deadly dinner?
African Birdlife
|July/August 2023
I observed an interesting scene at KwaMaritane camp in Pilanesberg, North-West Province. A Grey-headed Bush-shrike had caught a large caterpillar and wedged it between a small branch and the trunk of a tree
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It then proceeded to apparently degut the caterpillar, pulling out strands of intestine. It wasn’t completely clear what happened to these strands, but they did not appear to be consumed by the bird; I assume they were toxic in some way. The bush-shrike then consumed the degutted caterpillar in pieces.
I can’t find any record of this behaviour in Tony Harris’s Shrikes of Southern Africa and would be interested in comments on this observation.
GRAHAM BARR
This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of African Birdlife.
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