CALIFORNIA SHRIKE 157 



and one in a wormwood only 18 inches from the ground, the lowest 

 I have seen recorded. 



Eggs. — The white-rumped shrike lays four to seven eggs; six seems 

 to be the commonest number, four uncommon and seven rare. They 

 are practically indistinguishable from the eggs of the species elsewhere, 

 which are so well described under the California shrike. The measure- 

 ments of 40 eggs average 24.8 by 18.4 millimeters ; the eggs showing 

 the four extremes measure 27.4 by 18.3, 26.2 by 19.6, 21.8 by 18.3, and 

 24.9 by 17.3 millimeters. 



Food. — In a general way the food of the white-rumped shrike is 

 similar to that of the other races of the species, due allowance being 

 made for what its environment provides. In the southwestern deserts, 

 where reptiles are plentiful, it seems to eat many kinds of lizards and 

 small snakes. 



William Lloyd (1887) gives a good idea of its food in western Texas : 

 "It lives on grasshoppers when it can procure them, and in winter, 

 when the weather is severe, takes to carrion. I found one in January, 

 1884, so gorged from feeding on a dead sheep that it could not fly. In 

 the Davis Mountains it lives in winter on large coleoptera. In spring 

 it occasionally kills birds. I have seen SpheUa socialls arkon(E, 

 Vireo belli, PoUoptila ccerulea, and others, amongst its victims, and 

 in summer it has a fancy for nestlings." 



G. F. Knowlton and F. C. Harmston (1944) give a detailed list of 

 the stomach contents of 65 white-rumped shrikes collected in Utah, 

 to which the reader is referred. 



Other habits are similar to those of the species elsewhere. It is a 

 migratory subspecies, withdrawing from the more northern portions 

 of its range in the fall and spending the winter in the Southwestern 

 United States and Mexico. 



LANIUS LUDOVICIANUS GAMBELI Ridgway 



CALIFORNIA SHRIKE 



HABITS ^ 



Contributed by Axden Holmes Millee 



Over a large part of North America south of the great transconti- 

 nental forests, loggerhead shrikes may be found in open country and 

 broken woodland. But it is chiefly well to the southward, as in Cali- 

 fornia and in Florida, that the species is numerous enough to become 

 a conspicuous element in the bird life. The California loggerhead 

 shrike, Lmiius ludovicianus gambeli, westernmost race of the species, 



1 Derived largely from Miller, "Systematic Revision and Natural History of the American 

 Shrikes (Lanius)," 1931. 



