106 GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 



hedge-rows, orchards and meadows, and disappears again early in 

 April. 



The Great American Shrike is ten inches in length, and thirteen in 

 extent ; the upper part of the head, neck and back, is pale cinereous ; 

 sides of the head nearly white, crossed with a bar of black, that passes 

 from the nostril through the eye to the middle of the neck ; the whole 

 under parts, in some specimens, are nearly white, and thickly marked 

 with minute transverse curving lines of light brown ; the wings are 

 black, tipped with white, with a single spot of white on the primaries, 

 just below their coverts ; the scapulars, or long downy feathers that 

 fall over the upper part of the wing, are pure white ; the rump and 

 tail-coverts a very fine gray or light ash ; the tail is cuneiform, con- 

 sisting of twelve feathers, the two middle ones wholly black, the others 

 tipped more and more with white to the exterior ones, which are nearly 

 all white ; the legs, feet and claws, are black ; the beak straight, thick, 

 of a light blue color ; the upper mandible furnished with a sharp pro- 

 cess bending down greatly at the ^point, where it is black, and beset at 

 the base with a number of long black haii-s or bristles ; the nostrils are 

 also thickly covered with recumbent hairs ; the iris of the eye is a 

 light hazel, pupil black. The figure in the plate will give a perfect 

 idea of the bird. The female is easily distinguished by being ferru- 

 ginous on the back and head ; and having the band of black extend- 

 ing only behind the eye, and of a dirty brown or burnt color, the under 

 parts are also something rufous, and the curving lines more strongly 

 marked ; she is rather less than the male, which is difi"erent from birds 

 of prey in general, the females of which are usually the larger of the 

 two. 



In the Arctic Zoology we are told that this species is frequent in 

 Russia, but does not extend to Siberia ; yet one was taken withir 

 Behring's straits, on the Asiatic side, in lat. 66° ; and the species pro- 

 bably extends over the whole continent of North America, from the 

 western ocean. Mr. Bell, while on his travels through Russia, had one 

 of these birds given him, which he kept in a room, having fixed up a 

 sharpened stick for him in the wall ; and on turning small birds loose 

 in the room, the Butcher-bird instantly caught them by the throat in 

 such a manner as soon to suffocate them ; and then stuck them on the 

 stick, pulling them on with bill and claws ; and so served as many as 

 were turned loose, one after another, on the same stick.* 



* Edwards, v. vii., p. 231. 



