CHAPTER VII 



The Loggerhead Shrike: Lanius Ludovicianus 



IN FIELD TREES 



The Shrikes choose open fields 

 and sunlit distances. They settled 

 east of the cabin, on the Stanley 

 farm, in a scrub apple-tree be- 

 neath which four fields cornered. 

 v Mr. Bob Burdette Black told me 

 of them, and as he appears so fre- 

 quently in my bird-chronicles, a 

 few words concerning him are ap- 

 propriate. 



Bob has played with birds, 

 raised them by hand and befriend- 

 ed them ever since childhood. He 



has studied them in a half-dozen different states and he knows 

 them well. He is the manager of a large oil-lease lying on the 

 Wabash River where it has a strip of thicket on one side and a 

 heavy forest on the other. He holds this position because of his 

 love of the woods, and from Pennsylvania to Colorado he is 

 familiar with all outdoors. When the machinery of his leases 

 runs smoothly, Bob goes out and searches the fields, river-banks 

 arid woods for bird-nests. He locates them in large numbers and 

 then escorts me to them, often carrying heavy cameras and lad- 

 ders. More than this, when I am crowded with field work he 



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