BIRDS NOT OF A FEATHER 79 



pole on the lookout for a dinner! A kingbird, or other fly- 

 catcher which chooses similar perches, would sail off sud- 

 denly into the air if a winged insect hove in sight, snap it 

 up, make an aerial loop in its flight, and return to its old 

 place. Not so the solitary, sanguinary shrike. When his 

 wonderfully keen eyes detect a grasshopper, a cricket, a 

 big beetle, a lizard, a httle mouse, or a sparrow at a distance 

 in a field, he drops like an eagle upon the victim, seizes it 

 with his strong beak, and flies with steady flapping strokes 

 of the wings, close along the ground, straight to the nearest 

 honey locust or spiny thorn; then rises with a sudden up- 

 ward turn into the tree to impale his prey. Hawks, which 

 use the same method of procuring food, have very strong 

 feet; their talons are of great help in holding and killing 

 their victims; but the shrikes, which have rather weak feet 

 for perching only, are really compelled in many cases to 

 make use of stout thorns or sharp twigs to help them 

 quiet the struggles of their victims. Weather-vanes, 

 lightning rods, bare branches, or the outermost or top 

 branches of tall trees, high poles, and telegraph wires, 

 which afford a fine bird's-eye view of the surrounding 

 hunting ground, are fq,vorite points of vantage for both 

 shrikes. When it is time to husk the corn, every farmer 

 must have seen a shrike sitting on a fence-rail or hovering 

 in the air ready to seize the little meadow mice that escape 

 from the shocks. 



Shrikes also sneak upon their prey. When they resort 

 to this mean method of securing a dinner they leave the 

 high' perches and secrete themselves in clumps of bushes in 

 the open field. Luring little birds within striking distance 

 by imitating their call-notes, they pounce upon a terror- 

 stricken sparrow before you could say "Jack Robinson." 



