The Shrike stands roughly three meters in height and is composed of razorwire, thorns, blades, and cutting edges, having fingers like scalpels and long, curved toe blades. It is basically a gigantic, bladed killing machine.

The Shrike weighs over a ton, though it is capable of modifying its density as it sees fit.

Though metallic in appearance ("quicksilver over chrome"), the Shrike is also an 'organic' machine, humanoid in a general way, but with four 'oddly jointed' arms and intense, multi-faceted ruby eyes.

The Shrike does not normally communicate in any way with other entities.

Preferring to perform vivisections on its victims, the Shrike generally 'appears' near its victims and blinks about them before killing them in a flash of opening flesh and gore; sometimes it leaves its victims alive and transports them to an eternity of impalement upon an enormous artificial 'tree of thorns' in Hyperion's distant future. The tree of thorns is described as unimaginably large, alive with the agonized writhing of countless human victims of all ages and races.

A shrike is also a really bad-assed bird. FYI!