THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 9 
Family—LANHUDAE. 
THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 
Lantus collurio, LANN. 
EEBOHM observes that this species ‘“‘is a summer visitor to the whole of the 
S continent of Europe up to lat. 64°, with the exception of the Spanish pen- 
insula, where it is only an occasional straggler to the north-east. In Greece, Asia 
Minor, and Palestine, it is only found in the pine-regions. Eastwards its breeding 
range extends through Northern Persia, and throughout Turkestan as far as the 
Altai Mountains. It passes through Asia Minor and North-east Africa on migra- 
tion. A few winter in the valley of the Indus; but the great stream of migration 
appears to follow the valley of the Nile to South Africa, where it is abundant 
during our winter in Natal, Damara Land, the Transvaal, Angola, and the Cape 
Colony.” 
In Great Britain this bird is common but local; though most abundant in the 
southern counties, it has rarely been met with in Cornwall; in Wales, and the central 
counties it is not uncommon, yet it is becoming rarer in Norfolk, and in Lincoln- 
shire is almost unknown; in the northern counties it is rare, probably increasingly 
so; to Scotland it is only a chance straggler, though it has been recorded as 
breeding in the south-east. In Ireland a specimen was shot in 1878, and others 
were said to have been seen at the same time. 
The upper parts of the male are grey, excepting the scapulars and back which 
are chestnut brown; the wing-coverts black, margined with chestnut; wings dark 
brown, the feathers edged with chestnut; the two middle tail-feathers black, the 
rest white on the basal half, black, edged with white on the terminal half; frontal 
band, lores, and ear-coverts black; under parts rosy buffish, whiter on the chin 
and under tail-coverts; bill and feet black; iris dark brown. The female is usually 
quite unlike the male, her upper parts being reddish-brown, slightly barred on the 
mantle, her under parts buffish-white, barred (excepting in the centre) with brown ; 
there is no black on the head, but a pale buff streak above the eye. Young birds 
are somewhat similar to the female, but whiter on the forehead, with ill-defined 
eye-streak, their upper parts barred, and their feet greyer. 
Vou. Il. 
