120 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



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 be repeated many times in the course of the day, and that every mouse would be 

 carried to the strip of woods just over the river. Subsequently a chopper told 

 me that he had found a honey locust tree in this woods that had mice stuck 

 all over it on the thorns. 



The northern shrike has two principal methods of hunting, watch- 

 ful waiting and active pursuit. The former metliod is the one usually 

 employed, as in the above accounts, in securing mice ; the bird perches 

 patiently and motionless on some commanding tree, post, or wire, 

 ready to pounce suddenly on its unsuspecting quarry; mice may be 

 secured also by hovering over their runways in the fields and meadows. 

 Grasshoppers, crickets, and other moving insects may be taken by 

 watching for them, hovering over the fields, or by active pursuit on 

 the ground, though I have not seen the latter method mentioned. 

 But birds must be caught by active pursuit in the air or by chasing 

 them through the trees and bushes ; in the latter case the birds escape 

 more often than they are caught by seeking the shelter of dense growth 

 where the shrike is less adept in penetrating the thickets and dodging 

 through the tangles of branches and twigs; cedars and other dense 

 evergreens offer excellent havens of refuge for small birds. Small 

 birds easily recognize the difference between a shrike and some other 

 harmless bird, and immediately "freeze" in their tracks, or seek shelter 

 in the nearest dense cover. 



The shrike is a fairly swift flier, but is often not able to catch a 

 smaller bird in a straightaway flight, especially if it resorts to dodging, 

 at which the heavier bird is less adept. The shrike's usual method is 

 to rise above its victim and dive down upon it, felling it to the ground 

 with a stunning blow from its powerful beak, which often proves fatal 

 by breaking the little bird's neck or its back. The shrike follows it to 

 the ground immediately and, if necessary, kills the bird with a blow 

 at the base of the skull or by biting through the vertebrae of the neck. 

 Small birds often escape from such attacks by mounting higher and 

 higher in the air, so that the shrike cannot get above them, and then 

 suddenly darting downward into thick cover. 



Having killed its bird, the shrike seizes it by the neck or shoulders 

 in either its bill or its claws, or both, and flies away with it. Mr. Floyd 

 (1928) made a number of inquiries on this point and received replies 

 from 23 observers, 13 of whom reported that the prey is carried in the 

 bill, 7 said in the claws, and 3 had seen both bill and claws used. By 

 some one of these methods the bird is carried to the shrike's larder and 

 impaled on a thorn or a sharp stub on some tree or bush, on the barb 

 of a barbed-wire fence, or some other similar point ; often the bird is 

 hung by its neck in the acute angle of a fork in a branch or twig. 

 Mice are hung up in the same way, to be immediately devoured or saved 

 for future reference. The feet and claws of the shrike are evidently 

 not strong enough to hold the quarry firmly while it is being torn 



