“THE MIGRANT SHRIKE. _ Don 
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 wearing out 
his wings by incessant flight,—not he. Choosing rather a commanding posi- 
tion on a telegraph wire or exposed tree-top, he searches the ground with his 
eve until he detects some suspicious movement of insect, mouse, or bird. ‘Then 
he dives down into the grass, and returns to his post to devour at leisure. I 
once saw a Shrike rise perpendicularly some fifty feet from a telegraph wire 
by a labored but rapid flight to seize an insect to me invisible, and repair with 
it to a stone wall. Here he dealt his catch a severe blow, and when satisfied 
that it was dead, ate it contentedly. 
Like most guilty birds, and some innocent ones, the Shrike usually selects 
a thorn tree for a home. Honey-locusts and the various species of Crataegi 
are favorite places, but osage- orange hedges also present 
irresistible attractions. It is 
mature ten-rod stretch of these 
safe to say that there is not a 
delectable thorns in open coun- 
one or more nests of this bird. 
try which has not harbored 
Not only do thorns 
enemies, but they afford 
preservation of game. 
garter-snakes, — 
butcher does not 
is impaled on a 
as a ghastly 
sides that which 
protect the Shrikes from their 
them convenient hooks for the 
Mice, grass-hoppers, sparrows, 
anything which the over-fed 
care for at the time of capture, 
thorn for future reference, or 
warning to the unwary. Be- 
is laid up, the bird, in the case of larger 
game, invariably seeks the assistance of 
a thorn or splinter to enable it to rend 
its catch for immediate consumption. 
The nest—admirably shown in our 
illustration—is usually a bulky affair out- 
side, but exceedingly tight and warm 
within. Since the bird nests early, it 
counts nothing on the protection of foli- 
age, but cunningly screens its eggs by 
overarching chicken feathers worked into 
the rim of the nest. First sets are com- 
tnonly found by the middle of April, but the birds usually nest again in June. 
They are singularly indifferent, as a rule, to the welfare of the nest, but when 
it is disturbed sit clinking in the distance, or absent themselves entirely. Occa- 
sionally, however, especially if the young are well grown, they make a spirited 
and deafening defense. Eggs are deposited on successive or alternate days, 
and incubation is accomplished in about two weeks. 
Photo by the Author. 
THE SHRIKE’S PREY. 
