A WOODLAND TRAGEDY 81 



writhing body adds to the store in the shrike's 

 larder. 



A good place and time to watch a butcher-bird 

 at work is in a quiet field by a copse just after the 

 mowing. But you must hide carefully. The short 

 grass is then full of beetles, crickets, and grass- 

 hoppers, as well as of mice, shrews, and lizards, 

 who can conceal themselves less easily than they 

 were wont to do in the long hay before the cutting. 

 At such times, hawks and owls make a fine liveli- 

 hood in the fields ; but their habit is to hunt their 

 quarry on the open. They hover and drop upon 

 it. That is not the butcher-bird's plan ; he is a 

 more cautious and secret foe ; he sits casually on 

 his branch or his telegraph wire, with his head on 

 one side, till his prey stirs visibly ; then he pounces 

 on him from above, making a short excursion each 

 time, and returning to rest on his accustomed 

 position. When he catches a bird, and eats it at 

 once, he begins by spitting it on a thorn : then he 

 attacks the skull first, breaking it through and 

 eating the brain, which is his favourite tit-bit. 

 He also makes raids on the nests of other birds, 

 and carries off the nestlings. 



If you open the crop of a butcher-bird, the con- 

 tents will show you that, in England at least, its 

 main articles of diet consist of bees and flies, but 

 especially of beetles. It is full of their hard wing- 

 cases. Now, ornithologists have long noticed that 

 the distribution of butcher-birds in the land is 

 very capricious ; in one district they will be fairly 

 numerous (though, at best, they are rare birds), 



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