210 



LANIID^. 



uttered sufficiently often to form a sort of song ; and several 

 observers say they imitate the voice of other birds. The 

 food of the Red-backed Shrike is mice and probably shrews, 

 small birds, and various insects, particularly the common 

 May- chaffer. Its inclination to attack and its power of 

 destroying little birds has been doubted; but it has been 

 seen to kill a bird as large as a Finch, is not unfrequently 

 caught in bird-catchers' clap-nets, having struck at the call- 

 birds, and is recorded as having been seen in eager chase of 

 a Blackbird by Sheppard and Whitear. The same writers 

 mention their having found the bill of a Red-backed Shrike 

 coated over with cowdung, doubtless from its having been 

 searching therein for insects. Mr. Hewitson says, that 

 seeing a male of this species busy in a hedge, he found, 

 upon approaching it, a small bird, upon which it had been 

 operating, firmly fixed upon a blunt thorn ; its head was torn 

 ofi', and the body entirely plucked. 



The nest made by this species is very large in proportion 

 to the size of the bird, frequently measuring from six to 

 seven inches diameter ; it is usually placed rather high in a 

 strong hedge or thick bush, and is generally formed of 

 coarse stalks of plants on the outside, with some moss and 

 fibrous roots within, and lined with bents and a few hairs. 

 The eggs are four or five in number, measuring from -95 

 to "82 by from '68 to '62 in., and very variable in colour, 

 sometimes of a yellowish-, or occasionally pale olive-white, 

 with markings of wood-brown, olive or lilac, generally well- 

 defined, and often in distinct spots, but not unfrequently in 

 diff'used blotches, while again other eggs have a salmon- 

 coloured ground with markings of light red of two shades 

 and lilac, the markings in both varieties frequently forming 

 a band or zone. The eggs have been exceedingly well repre- 

 sented in all the editions of Mr. Hewitson's work. 



The Red-backed Shrike breeds more or less commonly in 

 all the counties of England and Wales, becoming scarcer to the 

 extreme west and north. It has not been observed in any 

 part of Ireland, and has only of late years been recorded 

 from Scotland, though noticed there, according to Mr. Robert 



