Dr. Ilopkinson—Shrikes as Cagc-hircls



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in the Zoo lists as new birds in 1902, 1912, and 1915 respectively. 1

Captain Perreau in Bird Notes for 1911 (p. 254) described Nos. 3 and 4

as making “ very good pets when hand-reared. Wild-caught birds

I have not tried, but fancy they would be difficult to steady down ;

they have quite pleasing notes, and some very harsh ones”.


No. 1, the American Grey Shrike, appears in Russ’ big work,

the only true Shrike included. The only fact of real avicultural interest

mentioned is that three were kept in 1879 in Chicago (Fremdlandishe

Studenvogel, ii, p. 464). The Indian Grey Shrike holds much the

same position in Dr. Butler’s book, where we learn that the first example

our Zoo had was obtained in 1890. He also mentions certain North

African Shrikes reared by Mr. Meade-Waldo. (See Foreign Cage-birds,

ii, p. 57, and A.M., 1905, p. 45.)


No. 7, the latest record is the large black and tvhite long-tailed

Magpie-Shrike, of South Africa. One of these reached the Zoo in 1920.


We can now turn to the Bush-Shrikes, the Malaconotince, examples

of which were the original cause of this article. These are, indeed,

rare cage-birds, even compared with their relatives already mentioned,

and records and references to them as such are few. In the A.M. for

1902, Dr. Butler (p. 44) writes of some of the South African Bush-

Shrikes as likely to make desirable cage-birds, and in his Birds of

Africa (vol. v, p. 410), Captain Shelley quotes Swynnerton as having

kept specimens of the Southern Grey-headed Bush-Shrikes,

Malaconotus hypopyrrhiis, in captivity for some time and found that

they fed freely on locusts, grasshoppers, and the like. This is just

what I found with those I have tried to keep in Gambia, but they never

got really meated off.


The Four-coloured Bush-Shrike, Laniarius quadricolor, was

in the Zoo collection in 1882 according to Dr. Russ (T.c. 464), and this

is the only record I have come across which can be said to raise these

birds from the ranks of potential to actual cage-birds, and the two

species on show at Damages are the first I have known as such, except

for my own unsuccessful efforts in this direction in West Africa.


The species represented are the Senegal (or Black-headed Bush-


i The Shrikes now at Carnages were all wild-caught, but in spite of this are

quite steady, one or two of them wonderfully so.



