The Great Grey Shrike. 7 



becomes the representative form. In tlie valley of Yenesei, the latter meets, 

 but does not interbreed with the whiter winged L. Icncopterus ; the last ranging 

 through Turkestan to vSouthern Russia, where, by its union with the typical 

 Z. cxcubitor, it seems to have produced an intermediate race, known as L. honieyeri.'" 



The Great Grey Shrike is a tolerably frequent visitor to Great Britain in 

 autumn and winter* : it is also sometimes met with in England in tlie summer ; 

 indeed, on more than one occasion, when out birds'-nesting with a keen old student 

 of nature — Dr. John Grayling, of Sittingbourue, he has called my attention to a 

 specimen of this species, conspicuous by its pied colouring : there is, however, no 

 satisfactory evidence that it has nested in the British Isles, although an ^^% in my 

 collection taken somewhere about the j-ear 1880 by Mr. John Woodgate, at Hadley 

 (Herts.) certainly looks remarkably like that of L. (xcubitoy. 



The adult male of this species is of a pale bluish ash grey-above, this colour 

 becoming paler on the rump and upper tail-coverts ; forehead, a line over each 

 eye, and the scapulars white ; wing black, with white bases and tips to the flights ; 

 central tail feathers black, outer feathers white, intermediate feathers grading 

 between the two colours ; under surface white ; flanks slightly greyish ; the lores, 

 cheeks, and ear-coverts black : bill black, the lower mandible paler at the base ; 

 feet black ; iris dark brown. 



The female chiefly differs from the male in its slightly duller colouring, and 

 in having the neck and breast barred with greyish-brown. The young are dull 

 grey above, and dull-white below, the barring of the underparts extending over the 

 bell}- ; the bill and feet are also paler than in the adults. 



The flight of this bird, as judged by the two or three specimens which I have 

 seeu, is somewhat wild and undulating: in its habits it resembles the common 

 Red-backed species, keeping much to the open countr}^ the outskirts of woods, or 

 to hedgerows ; when noticed it was in each case just leaving a bare projecting 

 branch of a tree ; the first specimen close to a wood in the Stockbury Valley, 

 the second near Dover. 



The food of the Great Grey Shrike consists of good sized insects, new-born 

 birds, or adult birds of such genera as Parus. or Regiilus, frogs, lizards, slow-worms, 

 mice, etc.: it is more raptorial than the Red-backed Shrike; and, not only some- 

 times hunts down and hovers over its pre}^ but even holds it down on a branch 

 and deliberately picks it to pieces after the manner of a hawk ; though, as a rule, 

 it spits it on a thorn after the fashion of its kind. 



The nest is usually placed at a much greater height from the ground than 

 that of our common British species, viz :— at from ten to thirty feet, in the forked 



* More often in the months of October auJ January than in others. 



