S70 Remarkable Individual 



and are brought up by their parents upon insect food. They 

 accompany the old birds for some time after they leave the 

 nest, and are then extremely clamorous and noisy, so much 

 so, that they may in consequence be often traced for two or 

 three hundred yards ; and the sound of them is remarkably 

 deceiving, appearing close at hand, though the birds may be 

 at a considerable distance : it may generally, however, be 

 traced to the nearest tall hedge, especially if a few small trees 

 grow out ofit ; and there the young shrikes may be seen, toge- 

 ther with their parents, perched on the most conspicuous places, 

 and ever and anon darting, like flycatchers, after the numerous 

 winged grasshoppers which at that season are always very 

 abundant, and which they capture with a loud snap of the 

 bilL In about a fortnight or three weeks they separate, just 

 as they begin to cast their nestling feathers, and about the 

 close of the month of August, or a little after, the whole of them, 

 both old and young, leave the country ; at least, I have never 

 heard of one being shot late in September. The young are 

 at this time in a very different dress from that in which they 

 reappear in spring ; and I suspect they undergo another moult 

 during their absence. 



Bechstein says, " This bird does not rank low among the 

 singers ; its song is not only very pleasing, but continual. 

 While singing, it is generally perched on a lonely bush, or on 

 the lower branches of a tree, but always near its nest. Its 

 warbling is composed of the songs of the swallow, goldfinch, 

 fauvette, nightingale, redbreast, and lark, with which, indeed, 

 it mixes here and there some of its own harsh notes. It al- 

 most exclusively imitates the birds in its immediate neigh- 

 bourhood ; and very rarely repeats the song or call of those 

 which merely fly past it : when it does, it seems only in 

 mockery. There are, however, some songs which it cannot 

 imitate : for instance, those of the chaffinch and yellow-ham- 

 mer, its throat not seeming to be sufficiently flexible for these. 

 In the house, its song is composed of the warbling of those 

 birds whose cages are hung near it." I have not, myself, 

 ever noticed this species to utter anything at all worthy of the 

 name of song, having merely heard from it a few harsh chat- 

 tering notes, which I could not well express in writing, inter- 

 mingled sometimes with a sort of conk, and a chirp something 

 like that of the sparrow. When its nest is approached, it 

 expresses its anxiety by continually repeating a note resembling 

 chack, somewhat similar to, but louder than, that which the 

 blackcap utters in a similar case. Bechstein, however, relates 

 also of the Lanius excubitor, the L. minor, and the L. rutilus, 

 that all of these imitate the notes of other birds, and with 



