THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE 157 



brown, and underparts a pale rosy buff colour, he has 

 not the look of the cruel bird he really is; his song is 

 fairly sweet, and I have heard of one which was so good 

 a mimic that it could even bark like a dog. This 

 particular one had been brought up in an aviary, I 

 believe. All this species are, however, very imitative 

 in their notes. In some parts of Germany, they are 

 looked on as a great scourge of small birds, yet one or 

 two of our English naturalists have tried to do justice to 

 the pretty fellow. They have seen only beetles, wasps 

 and other not-to-be-regretted small deer impaled on the 

 thorns of his larder. In point of fact, small birds, 

 especially our pleasant little Tits, disappear under his 

 notice ; Whitethroats also occasionally, as well as bigger 

 fledglings. 



The German naturalist Linz writes that he made some 

 experiments in regard to Shrikes. In one garden he 

 destroyed every Butcher-bird's nest that he could find, 

 and shot the birds; and there he had plenty of fruit, 

 because the small birds stayed and destroyed the grubs 

 and insects. In another, a larger garden, he allowed 

 just one Shrike to breed. Wasps and other creatures 

 destroyed all the fruit near the part where this Shrike's 

 nest was. In a third garden Lenz allowed Shrikes to 

 nest freely, with the result that all the insect-eating birds 

 forsook the place, or else were destroyed by the Butcher- 

 birds, and there was no fruit. Writing of the Red- 

 backed Shrike, one of our leading authorities in bird 

 matters notes that in its larder he has seen the bodies of 

 large moths, dragon-flies, mice, and sometimes a small 

 bird from which the head has been wrenched, and many 

 a cockchafer ; and Canon Tristam considers that the food 

 of the various species of Shrikes is almost entirely 



