26 THE BIRDS OF CUMBERLAND. 



No. IX, pp. 106, 107) relates to a male of the 

 Great Grey Shrike, with two well-developed wing- 

 bars, caught in November, 1883, in Kincardine- 

 shire, N.B. : — 



" From December 14th to 21st, this bird, a 

 nearly mature male, lived partly on liver, partly 

 on an allowance of one Sparrow per diem. From 

 December 21st to 27th I gave him two birds a day. 

 On December 28tli I found him devouring a mouse, 

 which he must have caught for himself in the 

 aviary ; when I 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 ofi* the thorn and re- 

 spitted it, the thorn now passing through the lumbar 

 region, and the tail being now uppermost ; he then 

 tore the flesh ofl*, swallowing many feathers, which he 

 afterwards threw up as pellets ; finally, he took the 

 trunk of the Tit ofl'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 wdienever 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 



