182 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
1912 Recent Additions to the Catalog of Lllinois Mollusks. 
Trans. Ul. Acad. Sci., vol. V, p. 148. 
SHULL, Dr. A. H. Habits of the Short-tailed Shrew, Blarina 
1907 brevicauda. The American Naturalist, vol. XLI, pp. 
495-522. 
Woop, Pror. Frank E. A Study of Mammals of Champaign 
1910 Co., Illinois. Bulletin III. State Lab. Nat. Hist. vol. 
VIII, pp. 501-613. 
SOME BIRD CHARACTERISTICS 
W. S. Srropz, Lewiston, It. 
THE SHRIKE 
This bird is variously known as the Butcher Bird, English 
Jay, Mouse Hawk, Winter Butcher and Summer Butcher. 
It is one of the strangest of all our birds. Naturalists were 
long undecided where to place it, whether as an accipitrine or 
a Pica. That is, was he a hawk or a crow? He had the charac- 
teristics of both and lacked some of the essential features of 
both. For instance, he had all the courage, the fierceness and 
boldness of the hawks, but he had the feet of the magpie and 
the jay. 
The upper mandible was notched and hooked like the hawks, 
but he had no grasping talons. He was a blood-thirsty killer 
like the hawks, but like the crows, jays and magpies, who 
secrete their food, he impales his prey on a thorn, barbed-wire 
fence, or hangs it by the head in a crotch or fork of a tree. 
Then again he looks much like the southern mockingbird, 
builds a nest like one and in the same localities. Also he is an 
imitator ; uses the notes of other birds as the mockingbird does, 
but does this to lure birds to his vicinity, that he may catch 
and kill them. So where did he belong? 
Some ornithologists of the old world still insists that as he is 
a bird of prey, he should be classed with the raptores or hawks 
and owls. Then there was another trouble, he also looked 
much like the kingbirds and other flycatchers and like the king- 
