170 LAND-BIRDS. 



and voice, at what time if any happen to approach neare her 

 she out of hand ceazeth on them, and devoureth them (un- 

 grateful subtill fowle!) in requital for their simplicity and 

 pains. 



"Heere I end of this hawke, because I neither accompte her 

 worthy the name of a hawke, in whom there resteth no valor 

 or hardiness, nor yet deserving to have any more written upon 

 her propertie and nature. For truly it is not the property of 

 any other hawke, by such devise and cowardly will to come by 

 their prey, but they love to winne it by main force of wings at 

 random, as the round winged hawkes doe, or by free stooping, 

 as the hawkes of the Tower doe most commonly use, as the 

 falcon, gerfalcon, sacre, merlyn, and such like." 



B. LUDOVICIANUS EXCUBITORIDES.* Whlte-rumped 



Shrike. But rarely obtained so far to the northward as Mas- 

 sachusetts.! 



a. 8-9 inches long. Like the Butcher-bird (^.), but more 

 slaty above, and generally with no white on the head (except 

 on the throat), the eye-stripes meeting on the forehead. 



b. The nest is said to be much less elaborate than that of 

 the " Butcher-bird," though the eggs are very similar to those 



* In the original edition this stood same shape and proportions as in typi- 

 as " Collurio ludovicianus, Loggerhead cal excubitorides. This last considera- 

 Shrike." Since Mr. Minot wrote, how- tion, taken in connection with the fact 

 ever, there has been much discussion that these Shrikes are believed to have 

 as to whether our New England birds come to New England from the west- 

 should be called Loggerhead or White- ward within the last twenty-five years, 

 rumped Shrikes, or both. As a mat- makes it seem practically necessary to 

 ter of fact they are neither, but, like call them excubitorides. In any case 

 the birds which occur in New York, they must all bear the same name, for 

 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the upper the presence or absence of a whitish 

 Mississippi Valley generally, they are rump is a purely individual character- 

 variously intermediate in coloring be- istic. W. B. 



tween typical ludovicianus and excubi- t This Shrike is now known to breed 

 torides. The rump is seldom conspicu- regularly and in some numbers at vari- 

 ously white, and often no lighter than ous localities in the more open parts of 

 the back, but the general coloring, as Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, 

 a rule, is more nearly like that of the but in southern New England it is found 

 western than the southern form, while only in autumn, winter, and spring, and 

 the bill is invariably much too slender is never at all common, 

 for ludovicianus and essentially of the 



