150 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



hedges, especially osage-orange hedges. Ora W. Knight (1908) says 

 that, in Maine, "it is largely a bird of civilization, frequenting the 

 hedgerows, wayside trees, telegraph wires and peaks of houses, and 

 I have never seen them at any distance from cultivated lands." Al- 

 though the loggerhead shrike is common in tlie flat pinewoods of 

 Florida, its northern relatives seems to largely avoid pinewoods and 

 dense deciduous woods, though it sometimes breeds in the more open' 

 stands of fir trees in the northern part of its range. 



Prof. Maurice Brooks sends me the following interesting comment 

 on the distribution of the migrant shrike in West Virginia : "For some 

 reason migrant shrikes are rare in West Virginia west of the Allegheny 

 crests, becoming common or locally abundant in the river valleys of 

 the eastern portion of the State. Whether or not there is any corre- 

 lation, it is interesting to plot the distribution of this bird and the rain- 

 fall within the areas of its presumed range. Common in the Middle 

 West where rainfall averages around 30 inches or below, it becomes 

 scarce or absent in the Allegheny foothills of Ohio and western West 

 Virginia, where the precipitation shows a sharp increase to 35 or 40 

 inches. In the West Virginia regions where rainfall is heavier, 50 or 

 60 inches, it is, so far as we know, completely abse^it as a breeding 

 bird ; but to the east, where the Allegheny Mountains throw the valleys 

 into a rain shadow, the bird reappears in good numbers. This may be 

 accidental, but the gap in distribution cannot be accounted for by any 

 known factors of food, temperature, or place to impale victims." 



Territory. — Mr. Knight (1908) says: "A pair of birds occupies the 

 same locality year after year, that is to say I have found nests in the 

 same trees or group of trees, and many times on the very same limb 

 from which a nest or nests had been taken in years previously. The 

 eggs also were of the same type so that it was evidently the same birds. 

 * * * In one case the male bird was killed and the survivor soon 

 found a mate and had another nest in the same locality within a month. 

 The next season the female was killed, the male shortly found a new 

 mate in the same way and another nest was built, and the eggs laid 

 therein were of a different type. * * * I have knowledge of one 

 pair being in the same locality for ten years, and of several other pair 

 for only a year or so less than this." He does not refer to any attempt 

 at defense of the territory, as observed by Dr. Miller (1931) in the resi- 

 dent California shrike. 



Migration. — The migrant shrike is well named, as it is more migra- 

 tory than its southern relative, with which it has been compared. Its 

 migration range is not extensive, for it has been known to spend the 

 winter occasionally as far north as southern New England, where, 

 however, its migrations have been fairly well marked. Evidence 

 seems to indicate that this slirike originally entered New England from 



