JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 67 



simultaneously with the Snow Bunting and I^esser Redpoll, upon 

 which he doubted not they prey. Their disposition is to con- 

 fine themselves to the more unsettled parts of the country, 

 and in summer they retire to the deep woods and mountain 

 wilds of the interior, where they rear their young. They often 

 hover about the camps of logging and surveying parties, eagerly 

 seizing upon such bits of meat and other food as may be thrown 

 to them, and are known to the woodsmen by the name of Meat 

 Hawks.* He met with them among the wooded steeps of Mount 

 Washington last summer, and they probably build their nests and 

 rear their young in the wild glens of the White Mountains, as well 

 as other sparsely settled districts of New P^ngland. He quoted 

 from Wilson that they build a large compact nest in the upright 

 fork of a small tree, composed outwardly of dry grass and whitish 

 moss, and warmly lined within with feathers ; that the female lays 

 six eggs, sets fifteen days and produces her young in early June. 



He spoke of the rapacity of the Butcher Bird. Whatever it 

 seizes, dead or alive, must first be dropped over or impaled upon a 

 thorn, or small, sharp twig, before it can be eaten, or, in case no 

 facilities for such a purpose are at hand, then its food must be 

 dropped into the crotch of some limb or twig, too small to allow the 

 article to pass through entire, and there pulled to pieces. Grass- 

 hoppers, caterpillars, mice, small birds, must all be impaled before 

 they can be eaten, however hungry the merciless butcher may be, 

 and reliable ornithologists speak of thorn bushes in the vicinity of 

 the haunts of these birds being stuck all over with insects, inter- 

 mingled here and there with small birds — more than the Lanius can 

 possibly need for food. 



As to its courage it seems to fear no other bird that flies, and, 

 like the Musicapa \_Tyran7n1s tyranmis\, orKing bird, drives away the 

 largest and fiercest birds from its haunts. 



He had not infrequently heard of the Great Shrike in winter 

 dashing at Canaries hanging inside of windows, and it was such a 

 freak that led to the capture of the specimen then before the meet- 

 * It will be perceived that the Canada Jay is here confused with the Shrike. 



