60 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



of this fact I can bear witness. I shall not forget when I first 

 heard one of them sing, and his song was a delightful one. It 

 was in March. I was on my way to Buzzard's Roost for an 

 outing. Upon alighting from the interurban car, to my sur- 

 prise and pleasure, I heard the warbling notes of a bird. I 

 looked about me to ascertain whence it came, and in the top- 

 most branch of a large pear tree which stood nearby was a 

 northern shrike, and how happy he seemed to be. I fear he 

 was recounting in song all the death and destruction he had 

 caused the past winter, and rejoicing in the fact that he soon 

 was to be off to other fields of carnage. 



I have just accused the northern shrike of being a bird of 

 carnage, and of this there can be no doubt, for I have been an 

 eye witness to the fact. But is the same true of the logger- 

 head shrike? From my own observations I can not affirm that it 

 is. In almost all of the books on birds I find it recorded that 

 the shrikes, without 'distinction, have the strange habit of 

 catching large insects, small birds and mammals and impaling 

 them upon thorns, wire barbs and other projecting points, and 

 in doing so that they catch and impale many more than they 

 use. In other words, that they do it malevolently and this 

 gives them their name of Butcher Bird. Mrs. Miller, how- 

 ever, after devoting a good portion of one summer to making 

 observations of them, both in the thorn tree and on a barbed 

 wire fence, says, "In fact, I was never able to find the smallest 

 evidence that the bird ever does impale anything, and the St. 

 Albans ornithologist adds his testimony that he has often 

 examined the haunts of this bird, but has never found anything 

 impaled. And a correspondent in Vermont writes me that 

 he has watched the shrike for twenty years on purpose to see 

 this performance, and in all that time, he saw but three in- 

 stances, one being a field mouse, and the other two English 

 sparrows." 



There may be instances where the loggerhead shrike 

 does do this, but I am of the opinion that they are exceptional. 

 A friend of mine told me of an instance which confirms the 

 fact that they destroy many field mice, ami probably the 

 fact that they impale them. He and his father were shucking 

 corn out of the shock. Near by was an osage orange hedge 



