BUTCHER BIRDS 165 



its deep plantar tendons, strikes its talons into the 

 nearest. No other bird I know of makes its attack in 

 this way except the birds of prey. The little bird shrieks 

 and struggles, but the cruel shrike holds fasts and ham- 

 mers at the victim's head with its strong beak until it is 

 dead, then flies away with it to some thorn bush which 

 is its larder. There it hangs it up on a thorn and 

 leaves it to get tender. . . . This is no fable, I have 

 seen the bird do it." Again, the Rev. C. D. Cullen, 

 with whom I have enjoyed many an ornithological 

 ramble in England and on the continent of Europe, 

 informs me that once in Surrey he came upon a shrike's 

 larder, and on that occasion the "shop" consisted of the 

 legs of a young green finch. 



The usual food, then, of the butcher bird appears to be 

 small insects. When a suitable opportunity offers, the 

 larger species will attack a lizard or a young or sickly 

 bird, especially a bird in a cage. Of the rufous-backed 

 shrike Mr. Benjamin Aitken writes : " It will come 

 down at once to a cage of small birds exposed at a 

 window, and I once had an amadavat killed and partly 

 eaten through the wires by one of these shrikes, which I 

 saw in the act with my own eyes. The next day I 

 caught the shrike in a large basket which I set over the 

 cage of amadavats." But, of course, it is one thing to 

 catch a bird in a cage and another to capture it in the 

 open. Shrikes are savage enough for any murder, but 

 most little birds are too sharp for them. 



Fifteen species of shrike occur in India. The com- 

 monest are, perhaps, the Indian grey shrike (Lanius 

 lahtord) and the bay-backed shrike (Lanius vittatus). 



