Southern Grey Shrike - This medium-sized passerine bird eats large insects, small birds and rodents. Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches, and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder".
The crossbill is a bird in the finch family (Fringillidae). These birds are characterised by the mandibles crossing at their tips, which gives the group its English name. Adult males tend to be red or orange in colour, and females green or yellow, but there is much variation. These are specialist feeders on conifer cones, and the unusual bill shape is an adaptation to assist the extraction of the seeds from the cone.
