AN OLD CHALK-PIT 181 



couple, which are goldfinches; than which no bird 

 has paid more dearly for wearing gay feathers ; it is 

 the favourite booty of the birdcatcher. But there 

 is little risk in describing the third little household, 

 for it is that of a pair of red-backed shrikes the 

 lesser butcher-bird and no fancier will covet their 

 brood. This shrike (Lanius collurio), though it 

 cannot be considered rare in the south, is quite 

 infrequent enough to deserve careful attention. It 

 is, too, a bird of character, sinister, as must be 

 allowed, having earned some infamy from its prac- 

 tice of gibbeting beetles, moths, and even small 

 mammals and reptiles, which it impales on thorns 

 so as to have a convenient larder. But anybody 

 who has watched how ruthlessly a thrush will treat 

 a worm in its efforts to draw it out of the turf, 

 acting on the principle that half a worm is better 

 than no breakfast, will not judge the shrike too 

 harshly in the matter of mercy. 



The hen is sitting closely on five olive-mottled 

 eggs, in a briar bush in the centre of the miniature 

 prairie within the chalk-pit. She is a sad-coloured, 

 unattractive creature; but the cock bird, perched 

 aloft on the cliff, and making occasional raids on 

 insect life, is a pretty object for the spyglass, with 



