THE LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE 



and it was only a short distance to wire fences decorated with 

 wool, and the Stanley chicken yard, which furnished the lining 

 and trimming of the nest. It was a larger structure than a 

 Robin's. 



Mother Shrike laid five grayish eggs, sprinkled with brown- 

 ish ash. Father Shrike fed her as she brooded. When she went 

 to bathe he stood sentinel and no sneaking Cow-bird imposed on 

 his family and no thieving Crow ate of his eggs or young. Occa- 

 sionally, to prove that he was more closely related to the Vireo 

 and the Robin than to the Hawk family, Father Shrike perched on 

 a fence-post and repeated a few notes that made the Crow laugh, 

 drove away the Cow-birds and sent the Bobolink dancing down 

 the rod-line with every feather awry. 



The old Shrikes were very friendly and soon paid little heed 

 to my work about them. But there is no place for pictures of 

 them unless reproductions of their family run short. The young 

 were marked exactly like their parents and very like them in 

 color effect, and they were darlings. The grown birds differed 

 in having the gray parts of the feathering a solid color, a more 

 prominent hook on the beak, and their length of wing and tail 

 destroyed in them the plump appearance of the babies. At a 

 little distance no difference could be noticed except in shape. 



The youngsters filled their cradle to overflowing. They were 

 impartial and allowed Bob and me to feed them. The parts of 

 their food they could not assimilate they regurgitated in little ob- 

 long pellets. There was no such thing as calculating the number 

 of insects consumed in that nest in a day. The old birds kept up 

 a steady flight and Bob and I wore ourselves out, yet the five 

 squalling beaks were always wide open. If any baby failed to 

 receive a morsel, it caught one of its nest -mates by the bill or 

 wing and tried to swallow it. To watch the performance made 

 one doubt if a baby with two sound eyes could leave the nest. 



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