( 109 ) 

 A NOTE ON THE RED-BACKED SHlilKE. 



BY 



J. H. OWEN. 



In Byitish Birds, Vol. X., p. 175, I had some notes on the 

 Red-backed Shrike {Lanius c. collurio). There I stated that 

 usually the birds did not have a collected larder but hung 

 their game on convenient thorns as it was caught. My 

 observations since then bear this statement out. This 

 summer two pairs of Shrikes nested close to the school at 

 Felsted. Both were robbed once and, I fancy, one of them 

 twice, but in the end each pair reared a brood of young : 

 one five ; the other, two. The nestling period of the five was 

 under fourteen days. On July ist at 9 p.m. three eggs had 

 hatched quite recently ; on July 14th at 9 p.m. all the young 

 were in the nest. On the 15th at 4 p.m. all the young had 

 left the nest, but two of them were still in the isolated bush 

 in which this was built. I hid myself to watch the old 

 ones feed and saw the cock go off to hunt. A few minutes 

 later he returned carrying a young Common Whitethroat 

 (5. c. communis) in his foot ; his flight was very similar to 

 that of the cock Sparrow-Hawk {A. n. nisus) in a similar 

 case, except that the Shrike found his carrying powers severely 

 taxed. I rushed out after him, and he flew into a tree but 

 dropped the bird, and thus I was able to identify it. I then 

 hung it on the nest bush and turned away. Before I had gone 

 fifty yards the hen swooped down on it, whipped it off the 

 thorn and had got away into a huge blackthorn thicket with 

 it. This thicket had been partly burnt the previous winter 

 and so it was possible to see through it. I hunted round to 

 find the Whitethroat but without effect. I then hid again 

 and in some twenty minutes the cock went off, in the opposite 

 direction to his previous hunt. In a few minutes I heard 

 a great commotion among the small birds and shortly he 

 appeared, as before, carrying a Common Whitethroat. This 

 time I waited until I was sure he had put it in the larder. 

 I saw him leave a small blackthorn bush and found, in the 

 middle of it, the wretched Whitethroat with a huge thorn 

 through its throat. The Shrikes were both excited while 

 I examined their prey, the only game about the bush or near 

 it, and then I left to get a camera to photograph it. When 

 I returned the Whitethroat had been moved to another bush ; 

 its head had gone and it was almost entirely plucked. It 

 was hung by the skin of the neck. I photographed it and 



