movements are guided by the food supply, and if severe cold and heavy snows drive away the small birds and bury the mice upon which it feeds, the Shrike must necessarily rove.
Grasshoppers, beetles, other large insects, and field mice are staple articles of its food in seasons when they are ob tainable; in fact, next to insects, mice constitute the staple article of its diet, and protection should be accorded it on this account, even though we know the Shrike chiefly as the killer of small birds. The victims are caught by two methods: sneaking, — after the fashion of Crows, — and dropping upon them suddenly from a height like the small Hawks. In the former case the Shrikes frequent clumps of bushes, either in open meadows or gardens, lure the little birds by imitating their call notes, and then seize them as soon as they come within range. They often kill many more birds than they can possibly eat at a meal, and hang them on the spikes of a thorn or on the hooks of a cat-briar in some convenient spot, until they are needed, in the same manner as a butcher hangs his meat, and from this trait the name Butcher-bird was given them.
Their depredations are by no means confined to lonely fields and gardens. I was told by a friend living in Chieago, that last winter a Shrike visited her back yard regularly in search of English Sparrows. He would hide in the bushes, and, after killing half a dozen Sparrows, impaled them on the frozen twigs of a lilac bush. After they had hung a few days, he eat portions of them, and then proceeded to kill more, a proceeding for which he should receive unlimited applause.
In the Hawk-like method of killing, the Shrike sits motionless upon the bare branch of a high tree, and, as the little birds pass unconsciously underneath, he drops upon one with unerring aim. He will also try to seize cage birds that are hung out of doors or even inside the window. Last spring I was startled by a violent blow, struck upon a window near which a Canary's cage stood upon a chair. The Canary was trembling with fright, and on going outside
123
