Great Grey Shrike. 121 



to those who have seen it. It preys on mice and small birds, 

 which it treats in the same manner as its well-known congener 

 does its insect victims, fixing them on sharp thorns, and then 

 pulling them to pieces. Nay, so strongly is this habit implanted 

 in it by nature, that one of these birds kept in confinement 

 would force the heads of small birds, with which it was fed, 

 through the wires of its cage, and thus hang them up to be 

 pulled to pieces and devoured at leisure. This we learn from 

 Pennant, and the habit has been verified by Yarrell, Doubleday, 

 and several others. It always destroys its victims, whether 

 mouse, bird, reptile, or insect, by strangulation, previous to 

 affixing them to a thorn or stake, in the manner described above. 

 An ancient writer, in a treatise on ' Falconrie or Hawkinge,' 

 considering this bird to be an inferior species of hawk, accuses it 

 of alluring its victims to destruction in the following quaint 

 passage : ' Her feeding is upon rattes, squirrells, and lisards, and 

 sometime upon certain birds she doth use to prey, whom she 

 doth entrappe and deceive by flight, for this is her devise. She 

 will stand at pearch upon some tree or poste, and there make an 

 exceeding lamentable 'cry and exclamation, such as birds are 

 wonte to doe, being wronged or in hazarde of mischiefe, and all to 

 make other fowles believe and thinke she is very much distressed, 

 and stands needfulle of ayde; whereupon the credulous sellie 

 birds do flock together presently at her call and voice, at what 

 time if any happen to approach neare her, she out of hand 

 ceazeth on them, and devoureth them (ungrateful subtile fowle !) 

 in requital of their simplicity and pains. These hawks are of no 

 account with us, but poor simple fellows and peasants sometimes 

 doe make them to the fiste, and being reclaimed after their un- 

 skilful manners, doe have them hooded, as falconers doe their 

 other kinds of hawkes, whom they make to greater purposes.' 

 I need hardly add that the writer of the above, in mistaking the 

 shrike for a hawk, at the same time very much overrated its 

 powers and mistook its habits, for it is notorious that so for- 

 midable an enemy does it prove to the songsters of the grove 

 that no sooner is its voice heard than every other note is hushed, 



