MIGRANT SHRIKE 149 



doubt about it and asked him to identify it; he called it, with some 

 hesitation, a white-rumped shrike, L. I. excuhitorides, but admitted 

 that it was not quite typical. This was, of course, some time before 

 7nigrans was recognized. 



Even as late as 1895 the second edition of the A. O. U. Check-list 

 gave the breeding range of the loggerhead shrike, L. I. ludovicianus, as 

 extending northeastward to New England, but restricted excubi- 

 torides to breeding west of the eastern border of the Great Plains. 

 The confusion and misunderstandings were finally cleared up by 

 William Palmer (1898), who described and named the migrant 

 shrike, L. I. migrans, as a distinct subspecies. His historical synopsis 

 gives an interesting account of all the misunderstandings that had 

 prevailed since the daj'^s of Wilson and Audubon, to which the reader 

 is referred, as it is too long to be included here. He gives the distin- 

 guishing characters of the adult males of the two eastern races as fol- 

 lows : Loggerhead shrike : "Above dark slaty ; beneath almost immac- 

 ulate white; bill large and stout, swollen toward tip; hook large and 

 coarse, gently curved downwards; tail longer than wing." Migrant 

 shrike: "Above bluish gray; beneath pale slaty; throat white; bill 

 smaller, regularly tapering; hook delicate and sharply bent down- 

 wards; tail shorter than wing." This wing-to-tail ratio follows the 

 usual rule, that birds having long migration routes have relatively 

 longer wings than those that do not migrate. 



He gives the range of the loggerhead shrike as "from middle Louisi- 

 ana eastward along the Gulf Coast and its indentations ; throughout 

 Florida, and eastward into North Carolina. Extending from this 

 range to an indeterminate distance up the valleys, though generally 

 confined below the 100-foot contour line. Non-migratory except at 

 its more northern and its higher habitat." And that of the migrant 

 shrike as "from Maine, Vermont, and Canada to Minnesota; south- 

 wards into North Carolina and the Ohio Valley to the Plains. Absent 

 in winter from its more northern and higher habitats and migrating 

 in the autumn toward the Atlantic Coast and into the Carolinas, Ten- 

 nessee, and lower Mississippi valley. Breeding almost entirely above 

 the 600-foot contour in the valleys, casually up to about 2000 feet, and 

 to within about 50 miles of the coast in Maine. From Canada and 

 the edges of the plains intergrading into excubitoridesy 



"From the distribution here given," says Palmer, "it will be noticed 

 that there is a considerable hiatus between the breeding ranges of these 

 two forms. This is evidently caused by the fact that the interval be- 

 tween the 100-foot and the 500-foot contours is a part of the great 

 coastal plain forest region of the south, a region unsuited to shrikes, 

 and in which they do not breed." 



All shrikes love open country, thinly wooded regions, scrubby 

 country, clearings, meadows, pastures, and thickets along roads and 



