Vermont Bird Club 15 



of their family and pulled them from the nest, leaving them to die. 

 This ends my first experience in trying to establish my purple martin 

 colony." 



Since then, from knowledge gained, I am led to believe that the 

 English sparrows were the cause of the disaster. Instances have come 

 to my attention where the English sparrows have pulled nestling 

 birds of other species out of bird houses and I have little doubt that 

 they did so in this case. 



Next spring I intend to try another experiment, hoping for better 

 success. 



THE NORTHERN SHRIKE IN WINTER. 

 Miss Marion Bole, West Barnet, Vt. 



As far as my observations go the Northern Shrike, Lanius borealis, 

 does not nest in this vicinity but it is a frequent visitor in spring and 

 fall and occasionally remains during the winter. Naturally it is not 

 a bird that makes itself conspicuous and were it not for the fact that it 

 too often attaches itself to my bird family I should probably see it 

 very seldom. 



The chickadees are usually the first to sound the alarm and as I 

 have learned to interpret some of their signals, I always go to the 

 rescue. Often the cause of alarm is a strange cat, but if I find the 

 birds remaining motionless or hiding I feel sure that they have dis- 

 covered a hawk or a shrike. 



When the alarm is given they hide if there is any convenient cover, 

 if not they remain perfectly motionless, occasionally uttering a fright- 

 ened little cheep, cheep. I have known them to remain in one posi- 

 tion for half an hour, the only movement I could detect was the winking 

 of the eye which I have noticed is always a sign of fear in the chick- 

 adee. It is surprising to see how difficult it is to discover the birds 

 when they take that position. The nuthatch, especially, has a way of 

 flattening itself against the tree, head downward that gives it very 

 much the appearance of a knot in the tree. 



One day recently when I heard the alarm I could only discover two 

 chickadees, one in the tree giving the alarm and another on the bird 

 table holding a piece of doughnut in its bill. They remained in that 

 position fifteen or twenty minutes till the bird in the tree commenced 

 to sing chick-a-dee-dee which evidently indicated that the danger was 

 over for the bird on the table at once commenced to eat the doughnut 

 it had been holding so long and at the same time two birds appeared 

 from under a rose bush near the house, several more from a balsam 



