TWELVE WINTER BIRDS. 287 



impale their victims upon sharp pointed projections. 

 Their food consists of mice, small birds, snakes, beetles 

 and grasshoppers. Formerly these birds visited only 

 low-ground thickets where crab-apple, haw-thorn and 

 honev-locust or " thorn-trees " abounded, upon whose 

 sharp twigs and thorns they hung their victims. But 

 since the advent of the barbed wire fences the shrikes 

 have appeared everywhere along upland fields, finding 

 in the sharp, stiff barbs just the kind of an impaling 

 spike they wish. Why the prey is thus hung on 

 thorn or barb has not, as yet, been satisfactorily 

 explained, for it seems that objects so impaled are 

 afterwards seldom touched by the bird. 



Two species of shrikes inhabit Indiana. One, the 

 logger-head shrike, Lanius htdovicianusl^.^is a summer 

 resident, arriving from the south about April 1st and 

 departing thither about mid-October. This is the 

 species which impales so many grasshoppers and 

 beetles along the wire fences during the summer and 

 autumn. On one October day I gathered fully a pint 

 of such impaled insects from a fence row half a mile 

 long, and found that they represented sixteen species ; 

 eight of grasshoppers, two of katydids, and six of 

 beetles, all injurious, so that this bird, although sav- 

 age and bloodthirsty, is of great benefit to the farmer 

 and fruit grower. 



No sooner has the logger-head departed for the 

 south, than its cousin, the great northern shrike, 



arrives from the north to spend the 

 The Great . . .,, 



Northern Shrike. Wlllter Wlth us ' In general appear- 

 ance this latter species closely resem- 

 bles that exquisite singer, the southern mocking bird ; 



