PASSERES. ( 123 ) LANIID/E. 



THE GEEAT GREY SHRIKE. 



BUTCHER BIRD, MURDERING PIE. 



Lanius excuhitor. 



spare helpless innocence — 



Troth, pleasant talk ! 

 Yon Sparrow snaps inore lives in a day, 

 Tha?t in a twelvemonth I could take away. 



Montgomery, Birds. 



L'oiscau bruyant, hardi, qu'o7i nomine Pie-Grihche, 

 Nous rappelle a, V esprit femme a I'humeur reviche.'^ 



This species is sometimes seen in the county during the 

 autumn, winter, and spring months, but its visits are rare 

 and irregular. 



In the report on the parish of Eccles, in the New 

 Statistical Account of Scotland, 1834, Dr. Eobert D. Thomson, 

 F.E.S., mentions that the parish is occasionally visited by 

 the Greater Butcher Bird." Mr. Wilson, late of Edington 

 Mains, informs me that his brother shot a specimen of this 

 bird on a thorn tree near the public road there in 1845. Mr. 

 William Patterson tells me that he killed a Grey Shrike many 

 years ago, at Grueldykes, near Duns, and also got two — a 

 male and a female — a few years later, on the farm of Green- 

 head, in the neighbourhood of Eeston. He says they were 



1 The French call a shrewish woman a Pie-grieche, or Shrike. 



2 New Stat. Ace. of Scot., vol. ii., " Berwickshire," p. 53. 



