BIRDS OF GUERNSEY. 23 



18. REDBACKED SHRIKE. LaniusCollurio, Linnaeus. 

 French, " Pie-grieche ecorcheur." The Red-backed 

 Shrike may be considered a tolerably regular, but 

 not very common, summer visitant to the Channel 

 Islands. In June, 1876, I several times saw a male 

 bird about the Vallon, in Guernsey. The female no 

 doubt had a nest at the time in the Vallon grounds, 

 but I could not then get in there to search for it. 



As the Redbacked Shrike frequently returns to 

 the same place every year, I expected again to 

 find this bird, and perhaps the female and the nest 

 this year, 1878, about the Vallon, but I could see 

 nothing of either birds or nest, though I searched 

 both inside and outside the Vallon grounds. 



Young Mr. Le Cheminant, who lives at Le Ree 

 and has a small collection of Guernsey eggs mostly 

 collected by himself in the Island, had one Red- 

 backed Shrike's egg of the variety which has the 

 reddish, or rather perhaps pink, tinge. There were 

 also some eggs in a Guernsey collection in the 

 Museum. These were all of the more ordinary 

 variety. There were also two skins a male and 

 female in the Museum. The bird seems rather 

 local in its distribution about the Island, as I never 

 saw one about the Vale in any of my visits, not 

 even this year, 1878, when I was there for two 

 months, and had ample opportunity of observing it 

 had it been there. There are, however, plenty of 

 places nearly as well suited to it in the Vale as 



