hen you live deep in the woods like we do, it’s not unusual to see the harsher side of nature.

We’ve seen the results of life and death struggles on more than one occasion. We’ve had wolves kill deer within throwing distance of the house. We’ve seen more than one hawk cart off a visitor to the bird feeder, and once a sharp-shinned hawk grabbed a chickadee that was literally perched on my hand.

Sometimes, we see it all from our picture window. It’s like a television tuned to PBS’s Nature, but no one interrupts the programming to ask for a pledge.

On Sunday, I noticed a northern shrike had perched himself near one of our feeders, much to the consternation of the 50 or so chickadees that spend most of each day steadily draining my latest offering of sunflower seeds. The bird was a young one, as indicated by the subtle wavy streaks on its breast.

In either case, it was remarkably persistent. It sat in one perch for almost thirty minutes, allowing me to snap more photos than I could ever use. Then after I had set the camera down and turned to other activities, things got interesting. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shrike switch to high alert, his eyes zeroing in on the snow below. Faster than I could react, he was on the ground. Snow flew as he worked to subdue a short-tailed shrew that had apparently been feeding on spilled sunflower seeds under a feeder.

I grabbed my camera and started shooting as the dark gray shrew tried to escape the shrike’s death grip. But the bird had it by the back of the neck and pretty soon the small mammal was hanging lifeless from the bird’s bill.

It was just the latest reminder that for creatures in the wild, death is never unexpected.

The shrike, apparently encouraged by his success, has been a regular in the yard ever since. It’s left our feeders mostly empty since the weekend, since most birds are too wary to sneak a sunflower seed with a shrike perched nearby. They know better than to turn their backs on a shrike.