48 A THORN-TREE NEST. 



they eat and drink, how they behave to one an- 

 other and their neighbors, what they have to say 

 or to sing, in fact, their whole story so far as it 

 was revealed to me, I shall set down, nothing 

 extenuating. Other observers may have seen 

 very different things, but that only proves what 

 I am constantly asserting : that birds are indi- 

 viduals ; that because one shrike does a certain 

 thing is no sign that another will do the same ; 

 it is not safe to judge the species en masse. 

 This, therefore, is the true chronicle of what I 

 saw of one pair of loggerhead shrikes (Lanius 

 ludovicianus*),in the northern extremity of Ver- 

 mont, about the first of July, 1894. 



The discovery of the nest in the thorn-tree 

 was not my own. A friend and fellow bird- 

 lover, driving one evening up this road, startled 

 a bird from the nest, and, checking her horse, 

 looked on in amazement while, one after an- 

 other, six full-grown shrikes emerged from the 

 tree and flew away. Pondering this strange cir- 

 cumstance she drove on, and when returning 

 looked sharply out for the thorn-tree. This 

 time one bird flew from the nest, which seemed 

 to settle the question of ownership. The next 

 day and the next this experience was repeated, 

 and then the news was brought to me in the 

 woods. 



It was a lonely road, leading to nothing except 



