78 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



doesn't like his game high : but he also knows 

 that wounded birds will live on and keep quite 

 fresh for days together ; so he is careful to dis- 

 able without actually killing the creatures he 

 captures. 



Among the animals I have seen in butcher- 

 birds' larders I may mention mice, shrews, lizards, 

 robins, tomtits, and sparrows ; among the smaller 

 birds he especially affects willow-wrens and chiff- 

 chaffs : but keepers tell me that they have even 

 found them seizing and spitting young partridges 

 and pheasants. Whether this is true or not I can- 

 not say ; but the game-preserving interest certainly 

 looks upon shrikes with no friendly eye, and you 

 may sometimes see one hung up on a nail among 

 the jays and hawks and stoats and weasels on 

 the " keeper's trees," where the guardians of the 

 wood display the corpses or skins of evil-doers 

 as a terror to their like, much as mediaeval kings 

 displayed the heads of traitors above the gates of 

 the city. 



Oddly enough, however, these " keeper's trees " 

 themselves are favourite haunts and hawking-pitches 

 of the butcher-bird, who is so little deterred by the 

 supposed lesson that he uses them as convenient 

 places for catching insects. For, in spite of his 

 occasional carnivorous tastes, your shrike is at 

 heart, and in essence, an insect-eater. He adds a 

 mouse or a tit as an exceptional luxury. Now, he 

 knows that the owls and stoats hung up on the 

 keeper's rustic museum attract numbers of carrion 

 flies, and he therefore perches calmly on the 



