BUTCHER BIRDS 



BUTCHER birds are so called because they 

 are reputed to have a habit of impaling on 

 thorns their larger victims, or as much of 

 them as they, owing to want of accommo- 

 dation, are incapable of eating at the time of the murder, 

 A bush which displays a number of impaled victims — 

 young birds, lizards, locusts, and the like — is supposed, 

 by a stretch of the ornithological imagination, to look like 

 a butcher's shop. All that is wanted to perfect the illu- 

 sion is a sign-board, bearing the legend " Lanius vittatus, 

 Purveyor of Meat." I must here admit, with charac- 

 teristic honesty, that I have never set eyes upon such a 

 butcher's shop, or larder, as it should be called, for the 

 shrike does not sell his wares — he merely stores them for 

 personal consumption. Nor have I even seen a shrike 

 impale a victim. My failure cannot, I think, be attri- 

 buted to lack of observation ; for I never espy one of 

 these miniature birds of prey without watching it atten- 

 tively, in the hope that it will oblige me by acting as all 

 books on ornithology tell me shrikes do. Every butcher 

 bird I have witnessed engaged in shikar has pounced 

 down upon its insect quarry from a suitable perch, 

 seized the luckless victim upon the ground, imme- 

 diately carried it back to its perch and devoured it then 

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