366 Remarkable Individual 



fixed in the air : and at length, when they do alight, gene- 

 rally hovering for some time around the branch upon which 

 they are about to settle.* On these occasions, the whitethroats 

 and other little birds quietly penetrate, as the shrike ap- 

 proaches, into the thickest part of the hedge ; but the larger 

 coleopterous insects appear to be what it is principally in 

 search of: and whilst the May chaffer (Melolontha vulgaris) 

 lasts, this seems to constitute almost its sole food ; as it also 

 does that [VII. 268.] of many other birds which, at other 

 seasons, subsist very differently. 



The whole of the Corvidae [the rook, and relatives of it,] 

 feed, during the month of May, chiefly upon these insects : 

 the kestrel and the brown owl devour great numbers ; the 

 sparrow feeds its young almost exclusively upon them ; and a 

 cuckoo, that was examined here the other day, had its sto- 

 mach quite full of them. The manner in which the shrike 

 eats them is curious, and has never (that I am aware of) been 

 noticed by any writer. Having captured one with its bill, it 

 flies with it to a perch, takes it in one foot, which it holds up 

 to the mouth like a parrot, and picks off a piece with its beak ; 

 still holding up the foot with the remainder, till it is all 

 finished. When its appetite is nearly sated, it becomes more 

 dainty, eats only the abdomen, and impales the still-living 

 body upon a thorn. I have frequently seen living beetles and 

 humble bees thus transfixed upon the thorns of a sloe or 

 hawthorn, and have invariably found them to be deprived of 

 the abdomen. 



This habit of the shrikes, of impaling their superfluity of 

 food, I am of opinion, is precisely analogous to the hoarding 

 instinct displayed by the Corvidae, the true titmice, and the 

 nuthatches, that they may thus sometimes furnish a resource 

 against future need ; or it may be that Providence has thus 

 intended them to regulate more effectually the numbers of 

 those creatures upon which they were appointed to feed. I 

 do not believe that any of the feathered race ever hoard up 

 a long supply of food, as is the case with bees and many 

 rodent Mammalia, to provide instinctively against the winter 

 season ; because this would be altogether superfluous in 

 creatures which are endowed with such wonderful locomotive 

 power, and which, in general, are so very omnivorous as 

 birds are : they merely conceal what they cannot immediately 

 eat, or place it where they will remember to return and look 



* Mr. Hoy observes (IV. 341.), " I have occasionally seen the ash- 

 coloured shrike suddenly stop in its flight, and balance itself on wing, in 

 the manner of the kestrel, probably looking out for mice, of which it is 

 very fond." 



