Citations:murderbird

a shrike

 * 1994 January 24, Dave Tiller, in What's a Shrike?, rec.birds, Usenet:
 * Meryem Primmer (mer...@core.rose.hp.com) wrote:
 * : Somehow today's lunch conversation managed to drift onto the subject
 * : of hawks. One person mentioned a type of hawk (?), a shrike, that
 * : hangs its prey on fences or other objects in order to attract a mate.
 * : This generated lots of heated debate by a lot of people, none of whom
 * : (including me) know much about birds of prey.
 * It's also known as a murderbird. There's also another name for it,
 * one that's apparently named after a famous murderer. (Not Jack T.R.)
 * I've heard that it impales bugs/small rodents/etc on barbed wire, tree
 * branchers, etc.


 * 2002, Quincy Troupe, Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems:
 * FLYING PREDATORS
 * butcherbird-shrikes, jackiehangmen, murderbirds
 * impale victims onto needle-sharp thorns, string them out
 * like ornamental trophies

probably 'a shrike'

 * 2006, Patrick Rosal, My American Kundiman: Poems (ISBN 9780892553303):
 * They say the sky will double at least once during a man's lifetime and so it did in Boulevards head [/] But turgid birds came three by three and then some to fling themselves about [/] So he swatted them away too [/] To fill the aching gapes of heaven he invited another swallow then two then three (their flashy undersides a dazzle and distraction) then nuthatch then murderbirds then uncountable dozens more [/] This is how he thought he'd save himself but soon enough his whole brain had become a madness of wings [/] A squeaky starling racket [/] Grackles darkening him.


 * 2016, Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall (ISBN 9781944211363), page 33:
 * We're all going to snuff it in the dark and when we do, the angels will, like murderbirds, descend on us from Heaven, our prayers still caught in their teeth.

a bomber aircraft

 * 2009 July 2, Hal Womack 3-dan, in Re: Venus Williams To Wed Mars' Womack?, rec.music.hip-hop, Usenet:
 * * Except, of course, for that considerable part which is either
 * starving to death ( in this general category another ~44,000
 * fatalities today ) or suffering bombardment from USraeli hi-tech
 * murderbirds aka Obombers or else bowling.

unclear

 * 2000, New Hibernia Review:
 * ... pulse
 * with cold, and there he freed his sight.
 * Lord Whirlabout again, those murderbirds
 * not his first notice of Senan, only another
 * assault out of his crane bag fully stocked
 * with tumbles.