436 LOGGER-HEAD SHRIKE. 



Dr Bachman, who has had much better opportunities of studying them. 

 " Your description of this bird requires, I think, many additions. You 

 say it has no song. This is true in part, but it has other notes than 

 the grating sounds you attribute to it. During the breeding season, 

 and indeed nearly all summer, the male ascends some cedar or other 

 tree, and makes an eJBFort at a song, which I cannot compare to anything 

 nearer than the first attempts of a young Brown Thrush. He seems to 

 labour hard, making as it were almost painful exertions. At times 

 the notes are not unpleasing, but very irregular. 



" You speak of the male shewing but little attachment to the fe- 

 male. I have thought differently, and so would you were you to watch 

 him carrying every now and then a grasshopper or cricket to her, poun- 

 cing upon the Crow and even the Buzzard, that approach his nest, and 

 invariably driving these intruders away. Indeed I consider these birds 

 as evidencing great attachment toward each other. 



" I have usually found the nest on the outer limbs of a tree, fre- 

 quently the live-oak, sometimes the black-gum {Liquidambar styraciflud), 

 and often on a cedar, from fifteen to thirty feet from the ground. Once 

 only I saw it lower, on the toothach bush, Xanthoxylum, about ten feet 

 high. 



" I have occasionally seen this bird with young mice in its mouth, 

 and have foimd it feeding on birds that had apparently been wounded 

 by the sportsman. It sometimes catches young birds and devours them ; 

 but I am induced to think, from the observation of many years, that 

 the food of the Logger-head Shrike consists principally of insects. 

 Grasshoppers and crickets are preferred; coleopterous and other in- 

 sects are also frequently seized ; and I have seen it catch moths and 

 butterflies on wing. This bird has the same propensity as the North- 

 ern Shrike, to stick grasshoppers and other insects on thorns. I have 

 seen one occupy himself for hours in sticking up in this way a number 

 of small fishes that the fishermen had thrown on the shore ; but I never 

 found either this or the Northern Shrike return to seek this prey for 

 food at any other time ; but on the contrary, the fishes dried up and de- 

 cayed. I have seen them alight on the same thorn-bush afterwards, 

 but never make use of this kind of food. May it not be the same pro- 

 pensity which Jays have, who conceal nuts and grain, and apparently 

 do not return to devour them ? 



" The Logger-headed Shrike is partially migratory in Carolina. A 



