6 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



Family LANIIDsE. 



THE GREAT GREY SHRIKE. 



Lanius excubitor, LINN. 



/^ORNITHOLOGISTS differ in opinion as to whether this bird is distinct from 

 V_y Pallas's Grey Shrike (with the single white bar on the wing) : Seebohm con- 

 sidered the two forms as distinct as the Carrion and Hooded Crows, but Mr. Howard 

 Saunders brought forward sufficient evidence to show that they had but little claim 

 to the title of separate species. In his Manual we read : " Many of the specimens 

 obtained in winter have a white bar on the primaries only, the bases of the 

 secondaries being black; whereas in the typical L. excubitor the bases of the 

 secondaries are white, and the wing exhibits a double bar. The form with only 

 one bar is the L. major, of Pallas, and, as shown by Prof. Collett (Ibis, 1886, pp. 

 30-40) it meets and interbreeds with L. excubitor in Scandinavia, typical examples 

 of both races being actually found in the same brood, while intermediate forms 

 are not uncommon. Where the sexes have been determined, the double- bar red 

 bird has generally proved to be a male, and the single-barred a female. Typical 

 L. excubitor breeds as far east as St. Petersburg, beyond which, in Siberia, L. major 

 becomes the representative form. In the valley of the Yenesei, the latter meets, 

 but does not interbreed with the whiter winged L. lencoptcrus ; the last ranging 

 through Turkestan to Southern Russia, where, by its union with the typical L. 

 excubitor, it seems to have produced an intermediate race, known as L. homeyeri." 



The Great Grey Shrike is a tolerably frequent visitor to Great Britain in 

 autumn and winter : it is also sometimes met with in Bngland in the summer ; 

 indeed, on more than one occasion, when out birdsnesting with a keen old student 

 of nature Dr. John Grayling, of Sittingbourne, he has called my attention to a 

 specimen of this species, conspicuous by its pied colouring : there is, however, no 

 satisfactory evidence that it has nested in the British Isles, although an egg in my 

 collection, taken somewhere about the year 1880 by Mr. John Woodgate, at Hadley 

 (Herts.) certainly looks remarkably like that of L. excubitor. 



The adult male of this species is of a pale bluish ash grey above, this colour 

 becoining paler on the rump and upper tail-coverts ; forehead, a line over each 

 eye, and the scapulars white ; wing black, with white bases and tips to the flights ; 



