THE GREAT GREY SHRIKE 73 
During 1907-1908 the economic réle played by the Rook has been 
thoroughly investigated by ornithologists and farmers all over 
Hungary, with the results that this bird stands as a friend rather 
than a foe to agriculture. 
FAMILY LANIIDE 
THE GREAT GREY SHRIKE 
LANIUS EXCUBITOR 
Head, nape, and back, bright ash grey ; a broad black band beneath the eyes ; 
under plumage pure white ; wings short, black; base of the primaries and 
tips of the secondaries white ; tail with the two middle feathers black, 
and the outer on each side white with a black spot at the base, the rest 
black and white; bill and feet black. Female of a more dingy hue 
above ; below dull white, the proportion of black in the feathers increas- 
ing as they approach the middle; each feather of the breast terminating 
in a crescent-shaped ash grey spot. Length teninches; breadth fourteen 
inches. Eggs bluish white, spotted at the larger end with two shades of 
brown. Sylvan. Young barred below. 
THE family of Shrikes, or Butcher-birds, would seem to occupy 
an intermediate station between birds of prey and insectivorous 
birds. The subject of the present chapter especially, though 
little resembling a Hawk in appearance, has, on account of its habits, 
some pretension to be ranked among birds of prey; from which, 
however, it differs in the essential particular that, as well as the 
rest of the family, it seizes and carries off its prey with its beak 
and not with its claws. Although a fairly common visitor from 
autumn to spring this Shrike does not wreed with us, and is rarer 
in Ireland. It derives its name excuditor (sentinel) from its favourite 
habit of posting itself on the topmost twig of a poplar or other lofty, 
tree, whence it keeps up a watchful look-out, not only for its prey, 
but for any bird of the Hawk tribe, against which it wages incessant 
and deadly hostility. When it descries one of these birds, which 
it does at a great distance, it utters a shriek, as if for the purpose 
of giving an alarm, a cry which is instantly repeated by all birds 
of the same species which happen to be within hearing. This 
antipathy against birds of prey is taken advantage of by fowlers 
in France, who, when setting their nets for hawks, take with them 
a ‘sentinel’ Shrike and station it near the living bird, which they 
employ as alure. So rapid is the swoop of the Falcon that but for 
the warning cry of the Shrike it would descend and carry off its 
victim before the fowler had time to close his nets; but the keen 
eye of the sentinel detects, and his shrill cry announces, the 
approach of his enemy, and the fowler has time to prepare. The 
principal food of this bird appears to be mice, frogs, lizards and 
