107 



the aviary ; when T disturbed him, he was holding it half- 

 devoured in one foot. On December 28th, I gave him a dead 

 Blue Tit. He almost at once spitted it through the neck on an 

 upright thorn ; he then pulled the head off, and swallowed it, 

 feathers and all ; he returned to flay the breast, after which he 

 took the bird off the thorn and respitted it, the thorn now passing 

 through the lumbar region, and the tail being now uppermost ; he 

 then tore the flesh off", swallowing many feathers, which he after- 

 wards threw up as pellets ; finally he took the trunk of the Tit off 

 the thorn and carried it to a corner of a perch, where he left it, but 

 mounted guard over it : I then tossed him a dead Wren, which he 

 ate in the same way. I usually left him a supply of live sparrows, 

 which he killed and hung whenever his larder was bare. I had 

 some misgivings at first as to whether he would not kill the sparrows 

 one after another, and hang them in one long row. But he was 

 quite well disposed to them, and only killed them when he wanted 

 a fresh meal. He seemed to prefer house-mice to sparrows ; but 

 whatever his food, he always hung it, whether given him alive or 

 dead, before holding his post-mortem upon it. 



Appended Notes. 



(i.) From notes kindly given to me by Mr. \V. Greenup, 

 extending over many years, it appears that, although in 1865 the 

 Red-backed Shrike reached Keswick as early as April 27th, it is 

 not until between May 9th and 12th that this species usually 

 arrives in the Lake district. 



(2.) When studying the Great Grey Shrike in the Rhine 

 Marshes, July, 1884, I formed the conclusion, that the cries of the 

 fledged nestlings, when clamouring to the old birds, are decidedly 

 harsher but less shrill than those of the Red-backed Shi ike. 



(3.) The falconers of Valconswaard informed me that the 

 Great Grey Shrikes, used by them in netting " passage" falcons, 

 are taken at the end of September or early in October with limed 

 twigs ; and become so tame, that they cannot be used for taking 

 falcons for more than a single season. — H.A.M. 



