THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 9 



Family LANIIDsE. 



THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 



Lanius collurio, LIXN. 



SEEBOHM observes that this species " is a summer visitor to the whole of the 

 continent of Europe up to lat. 64, with the exception of the Spanish pen- 

 insula, where it is only an occasional straggler to the north-east. In Greece, Asia 

 Minor, and Palestine, it is only found in the pine-regions. Eastwards its breeding 

 range extends through Northern Persia, and throughout Turkestan as far as the 

 Altai Mountains. It passes through Asia Minor and North-east Africa on migra- 

 tion. A few winter in the valley of the Indus ; but the great stream of migration 

 appears to follow the valley of the Nile to South Africa, where it is abundant 

 during our winter in Natal, Damara Land, the Transvaal, Angola, and the Cape 

 Colony." 



In Great Britain this bird is common but local ; though most abundant in the 

 southern counties, it has rarely been met with in Cornwall ; in Wales, and the central 

 counties it is not uncommon, yet it is becoming rarer in Norfolk, and in Lincoln- 

 shire is almost unknown ; in the northern counties it is rare, probably increasingly 

 so ; to Scotland it is only a chance straggler, though it has been recorded as 

 breeding in the south-east. In Ireland a specimen was shot in 1878, and others 

 were said to have been seen at the same time. 



The upper parts of the male are grey, excepting the scapulars and back which 

 are chestnut brown ; the wing-coverts black, margined with chestnut ; wings dark 

 brown, the feathers edged with chestnut ; the two middle tail-feathers black, the 

 rest white on the basal half, black, edged with white on the terminal half; frontal 

 band, lores, and ear-coverts black ; under parts rosy buffish, whiter on the chin 

 and under tail-coverts ; bill and feet black ; iris dark brown. The female is usually 

 quite unlike the male, her upper parts being reddish-brown, slightly barred on the 

 mantle, her under parts buffish-white, barred (excepting in the centre) with brown ; 

 there is no black on the head, but a pale buff streak above the eye. Young birds 

 are somewhat similar to the female, but whiter on the forehead, with ill-defined 

 eye-streak, their upper parts barred, and their feet greyer. 



VOL II. C 



