Lanius senator
Silhouette: Andy Wilson · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The woodchat shrike (Lanius senator) is a member of the shrike family Laniidae. It can be identified by its red-brown crown and nape. It is mainly insectivorous and favours open wooded areas with scattered trees such as orchards, particularly when there is bare or sandy ground. The woodchat shrike breeds in southern Europe, the Middle East and northwest Africa, and winters in tropical Africa.
The woodchat shrike was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Lanius senator. Linnaeus based his description on the "red headed butcher-bird" that had been described and illustrated in 1734 by the English naturalist Eleazar Albin in the second volume of his A Natural History of Birds. Linnaeus mistakenly specified the type locality as "Indiis". This was corrected to the River Rhine in Germany by Ernst Hartert in 1907. The genus name, Lanius, is derived from the Latin word for "butcher", and some shrikes are also known as "butcher birds" because of their feeding habits. The specific senator is Latin for "senator", so-named because its chestnut cap recalled the colour of the stripe on the... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monfragüe National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 2 | Awash National Park | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia | |
| 3 | Doñana National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 4 | Sierra de Guadarrama National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 5 | Kidepo Valley National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 6 | Sierra Nevada National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 7 | Murchison Falls National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 8 | Niokolo-Koba National Park | 🇸🇳 Senegal | |
| 9 | Cévennes National Park | 🇫🇷 France | |
| 10 | Camargue | 🇫🇷 France | |
| 11 | Pyrénées National Park | 🇫🇷 France |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Woodchat Shrike sighting in Awash National Park on a given day, based on 27 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 76th most-seen of the 217 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Woodchat Shrike in Awash National Park on a given day, against about 10% in April, June–August and December, the lowest months. That is one of Awash National Park's driest months, with about 10 mm of rain against 85 mm in August. February–March, May and September have too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Woodchat Shrike sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Among the best
Of the 11 parks where we can rate Woodchat Shrike sightings, Awash National Park ranks 2nd at about 20%, level with the leaders once rounded. The best odds are in Monfragüe National Park (Spain, about 20%).
Same genus: Lanius
The closest relatives of the Woodchat Shrike that you can see in Awash National Park (genus Lanius, Typical Shrikes) are Somali Fiscal (about 50%), Red-tailed Shrike (about 10%) and Red-backed Shrike (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Woodchat Shrike is recorded against all the birds logged in Awash National Park (27 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
