THE RED-BACKED SHEIKE. 223 



by small birds in general. The may-bug which 

 floats in the air of the summer evening, dashing in 

 our faces as we walk over the green meadows, is a 

 favourite food of this species ; and the merry song 

 which the gi'asshopper sings among the herbage, 

 proves only to be its own death warning, if this 

 bird is nigh. It pounces down upon the insect, 

 and flying off with it in its mouth, seeks some 

 hawthorn, or prickly furze, or bramble bush, on 

 which to hang it. During the time when its 

 young are clamorous for food, several of these 

 insects may be seen hanging thus impaled, and 

 ready to be fetched away by the parent birds, as 

 the nestlings may require them. Young birds 

 are fiercely attacked, and naturalists have been 

 atti'acted to a spot where the butcher-bird is to be 

 seen, by the shrill cries of alarm uttered by some 

 smaller birds ; and on reaching the place have seen 

 a youngling carried off in its beak to a neighbouring 

 tree, where it was soon ingeniously transfixed, by 

 the neck, to a thorn. 



This shrike, like many of our smaller migratory 

 birds, passes its winter in Africa ; and comes to 

 us in pairs, in April or May, leaving this land in 

 September. It makes its nest in a high part of a 



