THE WHITE-RUMPED SHRIKE. 355 
audience which Ole Bull secured by awkwardly breaking one string after an- 
other on his violin, till only one was left. There, however, the resemblance 
ceases, for where the virtuoso could extract a melody of marvelous variety and 
sweetness from his single string, the bird produces the sole note of a struck 
anvil. This pours forth in successive three-syllabled phrases like the metallic 
and reiterative clink of a freely falling hammer. The chief difference which 
Taken in Douglas County. Photo by the Author. 
THE SHRIKE’S PRESERVE. 
appears between this love song and the ordinary call of warning or excitement 
is that in the latter case the less tender passions have weighted the clanging 
anvil with scrap iron and destroyed its resonance. 
The Shrike is a bird of prey but he is no restless prowler or hoverer, wear- 
ing out his wings with incessant flight—not he. Choosing rather a commanding 
position on a telegraph wire, or exposed bush top, he searches the ground with 
his eye until he detects some suspicious movement of insect, mouse, or bird. 
Then he dives down amongst the sage, and if successful returns to his post to 
devour at leisure. The bird does not remain long enough at one station to in- 
spire a permanent dread in the local population of comestibles ; but rather moves 
on from post to post at short intervals and in methodical fashion. In flight the 
