3IO MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



rule the Butcher-bird avoids extensive woodlands, and frequents open, cultivated 

 country or unreclaimed meadows dotted with isolated trees. The Fresh Pond 

 Swamps have ever been among its most favored haunts. At times it comes freely 

 and fearlessly into the most densely populated parts of Cambridge and Boston 

 to prey on the House Sparrows. Its valuable services in thinning the swarms 

 of these feathered pests were so ill appreciated at first that in Boston men were 

 employed to shoot the Shrikes as fast as they appeared on the Common or in the 

 Public Garden. Upwards of fifty were killed there during a single winter, twenty- 

 five or thirty years ago, but since then the Shrikes have been left quite unmolested 

 in our cities. Whenever a Shrike appears in our garden, as happens occasionally 

 in autumn and not infrequently in winter, all the House Sparrows which have 

 been haunting the place disappear at once, often for days in succession. I 

 have repeatedly found the remains of Sparrows, that Shrikes had killed and 

 partly eaten, hanging suspended from forks in the thicket of lilacs or in the 

 apple trees, just behind the house. Indeed the presence of a Shrike in our 

 neighborhood is often first made known to us by the discovery of these or simi- 

 lar remnants of its feasts. 



187. Lanius ludovicianus migrans W. Palmer. 

 Migrant Shrike. 'Loggerhead Shrike.' ' White-rumped Shrike.' 



Very rare winter visitor. 



Although the Migrant Shrike is now known to breed regularly and not 

 uncommonly in many of the less heavily forested parts of Maine, New Hamp- 

 shire and Vermont, and sparingly in western Massachusetts, it has been thus far 

 found in eastern Massachusetts only in autumn, winter and early spring and in 

 such limited numbers that it is seldom noticed, even by our most active and expe- 

 rienced field ornithologists. It seems to occur oftenest in the neighborhood of 

 Lynn and Salem where at least half a dozen specimens have been taken within 

 the past twenty years. There are also records for Brookline (February, 1879), 

 Newtonville (January 28, 1874), West Newton (October 21, 1872), and Framing- 

 ham (January 29, 1884). I can give only one for the Cambridge Region, vi::., 

 that of a female 1 in my collection, which was shot in the western part of Somer- 

 ville on November 9, 1 892, by Mr. Wilmot W. Brown, from whom I purchased 

 the specimen. 



1 No. 45,175, collection of William Brewster. 



