94 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



shrike, both possessing the same traits and essentially the 

 same nature, and differing little in appearance to the 

 casual observer. The wavy dusky lines on the breast of 

 the northern shrike, however, serve to distinguish it from 

 the loggerhead shrike. 



The summer home of the loggerhead shrike is eastern 

 United States, ranging north to middle New England, 

 and west to the great plains. The white-rumped 

 variety occurs in other portions of temperate North 

 America, and is probably gradually extending ils habitat 

 eastward, overlapping the range of the original logger- 

 head on the north and west, reaching even into New 

 England. The first individuals appear in this latitude 

 early in March, and the last are seen until the end of Oc- 

 tober. They may be seen perched on the telegraph wires 

 along railroads, in the summits of isolated trees in fields, 

 on shocks of corn, and on hedges along roadsides and else- 

 where. At the approach of any person they take wing, 

 with low flight, in a moderately undulating course, dis- 

 playing little of the lightness of wing so characteristic 

 of many birds. Like the passage of the great horned owl 

 among the forest trees, their line of flight is usually be- 

 low the point where they wish to perch, and hence their 

 flight ends in an elliptical curve upward to the branch on 

 which they aim to alight. 



A pair of shrikes will often resort to the same locality 

 year after year, even when disturbed in their nidification. 

 A solitary cottonwood tree, standing beside a small pond 

 in a meadow adjoinins: my native village, yearly harbored 

 a pair of shrikes. With another tree of the same species 

 on the opposite side of the village, growing near a hedge 

 and a ditch, I learned to associate another pair of butcher 

 birds, and annually I was certain to find their nest, either 

 in the tree or the hedge. Their nests were frequently 

 harried by wandering boys in quest of specimens, yet 

 each returning spring found the shrikes constructing their 

 homes at the accustomed stands. A reason for their ap- 

 pearing to return to the same places every year to locate 

 their nests is found in the fact that they prefer the end of 

 a hedgerow ; and if a pair select a site in any hedge, it 

 will usually be about twenty feet from the extremity of 



