Red-backed Shrike

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the red-backed shrike.

Red-backed shrikes were once regular summer visitors to scrubby hillsides and heathery commons and are handsome birds; males have a grey head, reddish-brown back, black and white tail and a black bandit-mask. They were known as butcher birds from their habit of storing prey by impaling it on a thorn or a barbed-wire fence. Now they're one of our rarest breeding birds.