116 BBITISH BIRDS 



for, bemg without crooked claws, he is incapable of grasping his 

 victim and holding it steady while operating on it. This is one of 

 those instincts which simulate reason very closely. The number of 

 remains of victims sometimes found suspended to a butcher-bird's 

 tree shows that he is occasionally very destructive to small birds. 

 In a case recorded in the ' Zoologist ' (1875, p. 4723), bodies of the 

 great tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit, robin, hedge-sparrow, and young 

 of blackbirds and thrushes, were found. The indigestible portions 

 swallowed — bones, fur, and wing-cases of large beetles — axe cast up 

 in pellets. 



In the pairing season the shrike utters at times a chirruping 

 song, not imlike the attempted singing of a sparrow in soimd. The 

 nest is large, and placed in a thick bush or hedge, and is com- 

 posed outwardly of stalks, and inside of fibrous roots and moss, 

 lined with fine bents and a little horsehair. Four to six eggs are 

 laid ; these vary a good deal, the ground being pale green, pale bufif, 

 cream or pale salmon-colour, spotted and blotched, principally at the 

 large end, with reddish brown and purplish grey. 



After leaving the nest the young keep company with their 

 parents until their departure in September and October. 



There are four more species of Lanius in the list of British 

 birds, all stragglers — the great grey shrike {Lanius excubitor), a 

 breeder in Central Europe ; Pallas's great grey shrike {Lanius 

 major), from North Scandinavia and Siberia ; the lesser grey shrike 

 {Lanius minor), from Central and Southern Europe ; the woodchat 

 {Lanius pomer anus), also from Central and Southern Europe. 



Spotted Flycatcher. 

 Muscicapa grisola. 



Upper parts ash-brown ; feathers of the head marked with 

 central dark line ; imder parts white, the sides marked with longi- 

 tudinal brown streaks ; flanks tinged with red. Length, five and a 

 half inches. 



The spotted flycatcher is one of our commonest summer 

 migrants, and at the same time one of the least remarked. He is a 

 late comer, arriving about the middle of May ; but he does not come 

 after the leaves are out, to conceal himself among them, after the 



