72 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



like he will hover and swoop, and following the 

 same example, he will sometimes carry off his 

 prey clutched in his feet. He is a dangerous foe 

 to every bird smaller than himself, and from his 

 well-known habit of impaling the bodies of his 

 victims on thorns and twigs well merits the name 

 of butcher-bird. But this cannot be said of the 

 pair that owned the nest in the dead willow- 

 clump, for after visiting them very often and 

 spending hours in their company, I could not 

 find that they preyed on anything larger than 

 the insects of the surrounding fields. 



These birds were provided with a very com- 

 plete equipment for securing this sort of prey. 

 Their notched beaks were special instruments for 

 getting through the armor-plate of beetles and 

 grasshoppers and their eyes were marvels of 

 acuteness. Their favorite perch was the tele- 

 graph wire — the railroad ran by within a hun- 

 dred and fifty yards — and from this vantage 

 point they seemed to be able to detect an insect 

 at an almost incredible distance. Sometimes, too, 

 they plucked their prey out of the air, after the 

 fashion of the flycatchers. But evidently it was 

 only the straight-ahead flyers of the beetle tribe 

 that they could catch thus, for the birds usually 



