Obvious as it perches high in the top of a tree, bush, or telephone wire in open country, the Loggerhead Shrike is constantly looking for prey, such as large insects, mice, lizards and occasionally small birds. When prey is sighted running on the ground, the shrike swoops down and dispatches it with its hooked bill. In times of prey abundance, the shrike will impale extra food items on spines of bushes or on sharp points of barbed wire, sometime accumulating many dead carcasses all hanging as in a butcher shop.