250 THE GREAT GREY-SHRIKE 



gambolled freely, apparently unmolested. There are laws governing 

 the relations of animals with one another of which the explanation is 

 wholly beyond our limited knowledge. 



Shrikes fight bravely in defence of their young, for they have all 

 the dashing courage of freebooters. I was once aroused from sleep in 

 the grey dawn of a June morning by a series of angry screeches ; and, 

 looking round, saw a huge powerful cat stalking sedately away from a 

 bush which contained a nest of young shrikes. Her sedateness soon 

 vanished. The adult birds swooped down upon her like miniature 

 hawks, to the utter discomfiture of the cat, whose orderly retreat soon 

 became a disgraceful rout ; her pace gradually quickened into a run, 

 which finally ended in a leap over the garden fence. The victors were 

 not reassured for some time, but flew from bush to bush chattering 

 and scolding, alert and vigilant ; every moment swishing their tails to 

 and fro in a way that is peculiar to shrikes, and closely resembling 

 the manner in which their feline enemy also expresses emotion. 



When fully fledged, old and young keep together in little family 

 parties till August, when, as Doctor Ticehurst says, " They work their 

 way gradually to the south coast, whence they mostly depart before 

 the end of the month, so that their stay in this country is shorter than 

 almost any summer resident." 1 



THE GREAT GREY-SHRIKE 



[F. C. R. JOURDAIN] 



There is hardly a single country in Europe, Asia, North Africa, 

 and North America, where some form or other of great grey-shrike is 

 not known to occur, and it is not surprising to find that a species 

 with so wide a distribution has become divided into many geographical 

 races. But, unluckily for the systematist, there is an extraordinary 

 amount of individual variation in what at first sight appears to furnish 



1 Birds of Kent, p. 120. 



