82 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



calling forth the moths, and droning beetles begin to fly and 

 drum ; and as you watch him, suddenly a little brown moth 

 may come down the road, and you see his crest rise, you 

 hear him utter a peculiar call — ivhorrt — and, darting from 

 his look-out, capture the soft-winged little thing in his hard 

 bill, returning to his perch to devour him. Moths and beetles 

 and flies are his favourite food, and he always captures them 

 in this way all through the summer. 



When the end of May has clothed the hedgerows with 

 verdure, the butcher-birds begin to weave their large slovenly 

 nests of old grass, roots, moss, wool, and sometimes horse- 

 hair ; placing them either in a thorn bush, an osier, a bramble, 

 or even in the hole of a tree — one once built in an old apple- 

 tree I knew well — the hen there laying five eggs ; but more 

 often six. 



The old birds never go far from the nest, and you may see 

 them perched aloft on a rocking " sprag " at eventide, or in 

 the day hunting for their prey, which, unconscious of them, 

 swims by in the airy stream before them. 



And when the nestlings leave the nest, you may see them 

 huddled five or six together on a short branchlet, the old birds 

 feeding them, and the cock calling from time to time with 

 a voice like that of a small hawk. The cock is the chief 

 caterer to the happy family ; and should you capture one 

 and place it on the ground, and bring your finger up to its 

 bill, it will hop backward ; and should you for fun put him 

 into a yellow fulfar's nest close by, he will unceremoniously 

 bundle his hosts out. And if at such season a cuckoo pass 

 that way, the cock will dart boldly at him and drive him oft". 

 Indeed, he will turn birds from their nesting quarters if he 

 have a mind, and cares not one jot for any intruder when 

 there are young in the nest. 



The great grey shrike I have seen once or twice in Nor- 

 folk, but it was a brief vision — a momentary hovering like 

 a kestrel and a jay-like flight into the winter grey ness, just 

 as one sees a bright meteorite on a clear November sky. 



