THE NORTHERN SHRIKE 



UstJALLY the character of a bird of prey is well 

 defined ; there is no mistaking him. His claws, 

 his beak, his head, his wings, in fact his whole 

 build, point to the fact that he subsists upon live 

 creatures ; he is armed to catch them and to slay 

 them. Every bird knows a hawk and knows him 

 from the start, and is on the lookout for him. 

 The hawk takes life, but he does it to maintain 

 his own, and it is a public and universally known 

 fact. Nature has sent him abroad in that charac- 

 ter, and has advised all creatures of it. Not so 

 with the shrike ; here she has concealed the char- 

 acter of a murderer under a form as innocent as 

 that of the robin. Feet, wings, tail, color, head, 

 and general form and size are all those of a song- 

 bird, — very much like that master songster, the 

 mockingbird, — yet this bird is a regular Blue- 

 beard among its kind. Its only characteristic 

 feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two 

 sharp processes and a sharp hooked point. It us- 

 ually impales its victim upon a thorn, or thrusts it 

 in the fork of a limb. For the most part, however, 

 its food seems to consist of insects, — spiders, 

 grasshoppers, beetles, etc. It is the assassin o£ 



