STORIES ABOUT BIRDS. 



He delights in hedgerows and clumps of trees, or thickets that are not 

 very dense. His habit is to sit perched on a twig, or on a decaying branch, 

 and he will remain so long that the name " excubitor," or sentinel, has been 

 given to him on this account, as well as on account of the help he used 

 to render to the falconer. When a small bird or insect comes near, he will 

 pounce upon it, and kill it by blows on the head from his bill. He will 

 then hang it up on a thorn, or on the sharp twig of a tree, that he may the 

 better tear it to pieces ; and what is left of the feast he will allow to hang up 

 until his next meal time comes round. 



In his native wilds, in Africa, quite an array of little birds and insects 

 have been found hanging up near the shrike's nest on a row of thorns. 



The nest is placed in thick bushes and high hedges, and is made of roots 

 and moss and wool, and lined with dry grass. There are five or seven eggs, 

 of a bluish white, spotted with brown or grey. 



Though the shrike is a rare visitor to us, his race is plentiful enough in 

 other countries. He is found in all tliree continents, though not in South 

 America or in Australia. His shape is very elegant, and his costume a 

 clear pearly grey, with the under parts white ; and his wings and tail arc 

 black, tipped with white. His manner of flying is wavering, and some- 

 times he hovers like the hawk. The little birds know and dread him 

 greatly. 



One day a labourer, who was clipping a hedge, came to his master and 

 said that a strange bird was sitting in it. His master went out to look, and 

 examined every place, but could find no trace of a bird. A few days after, as 

 he was walking by the hedge,' he saw some blackbirds in a state of the utmost 

 alarm, and uttering cries of terror. He thought a cat or a weasel must be 

 about, but in a few minutes the strange bird his labourer had told him about 

 flew out of the hedge and began to wheel round in the air. Sometimes it 

 shot upwards with a kind of bound, and then hovered, suspended in the air, 

 and moving its wings as quickly as possible. 



At last it alighted on the top of a willow-tree, and then he saw it was a 

 grey shrike. 



A number of little birds were fluttering about in the utmost terror, and 

 shrieking their notes of alarm. The shrike's attention was fixed upon them, 

 and he seemed choosing which he should attack. Indeed, so eagerly was he 

 watching his prey, that he did not see a gun was pointed at him. It was 



