47 
competent “catchers” for the brief migration or passage in 
question. 
The method adopted is intricate and interesting, and must 
only be briefly described here. Moreover, our late lamented 
friend, Mr Barwick Baker, has pretty fully described the pro- 
cess, in a former number of our Society’s Proceedings. The 
so-called “huts” are holes dug out, and walled with sods, and 
roofed with boughs and sods, so as to be very undistinguishable. 
The occupant, who is frequently by profession a cobbler, is pro- 
vided with provisions, water, and Schnapps, and a sack of boots 
and shoes to mend. As his vision is but circumscribed, he 
depends greatly on a little living sentinel, who lives in full 
sight of his hut, in a little turf cabin or cage outside. This 
sentinel is the larger butcher bird or shrike, Lanius Hxcubitor 
—(I have hitherto avoided Latin names)—which bird is gifted 
with the most remarkable power of sight, and, as it would seem, 
with a tender conscience. Be this as it may, the moment he 
perceives any bird of prey, however far off—(I am told miles)— 
and however high—(I am‘told out of the power of any glass)— 
he begins to be agitated to a high degree, and calls and attracts 
the attention of the dullest hut tenant, exhibiting a terror so 
extreme and unusual, as really to suggest a sense of expecta- 
tion of retributive justice, on himself, from the approaching 
hawk, for the countless cruel, and dastardly actions, of his whole 
life. Truly is this little beast named the Butcher bird, for like 
all shrikes, his method is, to rend his victims—mostly small 
birds—limb from limb, impaling them first carefully, on a long 
thorn, or fixing them in a fork near his larder, which he thus 
literally festoons with their remains. No one who has not seen 
the neat way in which the English shrike, Lanius Collurio, thus 
serves countless insects on a blackthorn bush, can have any 
idea of the pain inflicted. In addition to this sentinel, the 
hawk catcher is supplied with a pigeon, who lives in a little box 
on the top of a pole, and which is attached to a cord working 
into his hut. He has also another pigeon living in a box, or 
turf hut, on the ground. Some 20 yards from his hut door a 
carefully concealed bow net, working easily, and well, also from 
