124 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



single and staccato, or given in series of three or four in the manner 

 of a mockingbird. The whole is a formless, disjointed performance. 

 When fleeing from an attacking crow, a shrike sounded a prolonged 

 rattle of high-pitched 'beady' notes — like 'pip-fip-in'p-'pi'p^ etc, ut- 

 tered very rapidly." 



Eugene P. Bicknell (1884) writes: 



I have beard a variety of notes from it in October, on its first arrival, and in 

 November; but its highest vocal achievement is in late winter and early 

 spring. * * * An unusually vocal bird was observed on February 10, 1877 — a 

 morning when winter seemed quietly relaxing from long-continued severity. 

 Perclied in the sunlight, on the topmost spray of a tall oak, on an eminence 

 commanding an expanse of changing landscape, it was alternately singing and 

 pi-eening its beautiful plumage. The song was a medley of varied and rather 

 disconnected articulations, an occasional low warble always being quickly ex- 

 tinguished by harsh notes, even as the bird's gentle demeanor would soon be 

 interrupted by some deed of cruelty. 



Frederic H. Kennard records in his notes the capture of a singing 

 shrike on his grounds, and says : "I heard its warble, but having seen 

 a robin before I saw the shrike, I thought it must be a young robin 

 practicing, so like were the notes. I thought, however, that the young 

 robin was mighty hoarse, so went to investigate. On dissection, this 

 singing shrike proved to be a female." A similar experience is thus 

 recorded by Dr. Arthur Chadbourne (1890) : "On the morning of 

 April 8, 1890, when walking through the Fresh Pond Swamps at 

 Cambridge, I heard a Butcher Bird {Lanius horealis) in full song. 

 The bird was an usually fine singer, and quite a mimic, its medley of 

 notes suggesting a combination of the Brown Thrasher and the Blue 

 Jay, with an occasional 'mewing' sound much like the common 

 Catbird. It w\as shot, and on sexing proved a female, the ovary being 

 considerably enlarged." 



Several other observers have referred to the shrike's power of 

 mimicry. Mr. Forbush (1929) adds the song sparrow to those named 

 above, and says : "One day Mr. Wm. C. Wheeler, who can imitate many 

 bird songs, whistled the song of a Robin as he approached a Northern 

 Shrike. The bird immediately mocked his rendition of the song, and 

 repeated it after him thrice." 



Field marks. — Shrikes look superficially somewhat like chunky 

 mockingbirds with thick heavy heads and bills, but there is a black 

 band on the head, through and behind the eye ; in the adult shrike the 

 back is clearer, gull gray, browner in the young, and the breast is 

 vermiculated with dusky ; there is also much less white in the wings 

 and tail; the latter is proportionately shorter than in the mocking- 

 bird. Its posture and behavior are quite different. The loggerhead 

 shrike is slightly smaller and is purer gray above and whiter below 

 than the northern shrike. 



Enemies. — The worst enemy that the northern shrike ever encoun- 



