Lanius borealis
Northern Shrikes breed in the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska, and regularly winter to the northern parts of the United States. They very occasionally find their way as far south as our area.
In the late nineteenth century, Langdon 1879 called Northern Shrikes a rare fall and winter visitant, while Butler 1897 described them as “usually an irregular, rare winter visitor, though occasionally it is found in some numbers” adding that in the winter of 1880-1881 it was quite common at Brookville. This pattern continued through the mid-twentieth century, with the authors from that period mostly quoting the earlier sources. Goodpaster 1941 simply states that there are no recent records.
As for specific records, Goodpaster 1941 notes that there is a specimen in the Dury Collection from Hamilton County, collected November 3, 1883. Kemsies and Randle 1953 reports one seen at Sharon Woods on January 18, 1948. Peterjohn 2001 accepts the specimen record, but notes that undocumented sight records, which would include the 1948 record, should be considered unsubstantiated, due to the difficulty of separating them from Loggerhead Shrikes.
With the advent of eBird and digital photography, we are finding that Northern Shrikes occur more frequently than earlier records might suggest, although they should still be considered rare winter visitors. They are recorded in our area, mostly from the more northern parts of our extended area, every year or two. We have only one Hamilton County record apart from the 1883 specimen, a bird which was photographed at Fernald Preserve on October 25, 2024 (eBird checklist S200873668, citing a Cincinnati Birders Facebook post). And we have no records from the other southern Ohio counties, from Indiana south of Brookville, or from northern Kentucky,