THE MENACE FROM ABOVE 99 



The Northern shrike is a little over ten inches in 

 length, gray on top, with black tail and wings. On 

 each wing is a white spot, and the ends of the tail 

 feathers are white. He will pursue a winter bird 

 like a tree-sparrow or chickadee or nuthatch re- 

 lentlessly through trees and thickets till the poor 

 little thing is exhausted, when the shrike kills him 

 by a blow on top of the head and carries him off. 

 One of his curious tricks is to impale his prey on a 

 thorn or the barb of a fence. If you have ever 

 found a small bird or mouse thus impaled, he was 

 probably put there by a shrike. The captor per- 

 haps was later scared away, or he may even have 

 killed for the love of it, without any intention of 

 eating his prey. One of the oddest shrike tricks I 

 have seen recorded is that described by an observer 

 in Birds of New York. This bird was hunting spar- 

 rows near the railroad yards in Green Island, New 

 York. He caught two and impaled them on the 

 point of a lightning-rod at the top of a brick chim- 

 ney a hundred and forty feet high. A pair of field- 

 glasses were used to verify the fact. 



On a little artificial pond near my farm we have 

 seen domestic ducks pulled under and killed by 

 snapping-turtles (the submarine menace) ; we have 

 seen fish taken by an osprey (the hydroplane men- 

 ace); we have seen hens and pheasants and other 

 creatures killed by hawks and owls (the airplane 

 and Zeppelin menace). When it comes to cruelty, 

 even in our little world of farms and peaceful hills 

 and lovely forests nature has given man most of 

 his lessons; which, to be sure, is hardly a valid 

 excuse for man, at that. 



