136 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



catch them and to slay them. Every bird knows a 

 hawk and knows him from the start, and is on the 

 lookout for him. The hawk takes life, but he does 

 it to maintain his own, and it is a public and uni- 

 versally known fact. Nature has sent him abroad 

 in that character, and has advised all creatures of it. 

 Not so with the shrike; here she has concealed the 

 character of a murderer under a form as innocent as 

 that of the robin. Feet, wings, tail, color, head, 

 and general form and size are all those of a song-bird, 

 — very much like that master songster, the mocking- 

 bird, — yet this bird is a regular Bluebeard among its 

 kind. Its only characteristic feature is its beak, the 

 upper mandible having two sharp processes and a 

 sharp hooked point. It cannot fly away to any dis- 

 tance with the bird it kills, nor hold it in its claws 

 to feed upon it. It usually impales its victim upon 

 a thorn, or thrusts it in the fork of a limb. For the 

 most part, however, its food seems to consist of in- 

 sects, — spiders, grasshoppers, beetles, etc. It is the 

 assassin of the small birds, whom it often destroys 

 in pure wantonness, or merely to sup on their brains, 

 as the Gaucho slaughters a wild cow or bull for its 

 tongue. It is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Appar- 

 ently its victims are unacquainted with its true char- 

 acter and allow it to approach them, when the fatal 

 blow is given. I saw an illustration of this the other 

 day. A large number of goldfinches in their full 

 plumage, together with snowbirds and sparrows, 

 were feeding and chattering in some low bushes back 

 of the barn. I had paused by the fence and was 



