6 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND Eccs. 
Family—L.ANUDAE. 
Tue GREAT GREY SHRIKE. 
Lanius excubttor, LINN. 
RNITHOLOGISTS differ in opinion as to whether this bird is distinct from 
Pallas’s Grey Shrike (with the single white bar on the wing): Seebohm con- 
sidered the two forms as distinct as the Carrion and Hooded Crows, but Mr. Howard 
Saunders brought forward sufficient evidence to show that they had but little claim 
to the title of separate species. In his Manual we read:—“ Many of the specimens 
obtained in winter have a white bar on the primaries only, the bases of the 
secondaries being black; whereas- in the typical Z. evcudbitor the bases of the 
secondaries are white, and the wing exhibits a double bar. The form with only 
one bar is the Z. mayor, of Pallas, and, as shown by Prof. Collett (Ibis, 1886, pp. 
30-40) it meets and interbreeds with ZL. excuditor in Scandinavia, typical examples 
of both races being actually found in the same brood, while intermediate forms 
are not uncommon. Where the sexes have been determined, the double-barred 
bird has generally proved to be a male, and the single-barred a female. Typical 
L. excubitor breeds as far east as St. Petersburg, beyond which, in Siberia, Z. mayor 
becomes the representative form. In the valley of the Yenesei, the latter meets, 
but does not interbreed with the whiter winged ZL. /encofterus; the last ranging 
through Turkestan to Southern Russia, where, by its union with the typical Z. 
excubitor, it seems to have produced an intermediate race, known as ZL. homeyeri.”’ 
The Great Grey Shrike is a tolerably frequent visitor to Great Britain in 
autumn and winter: it is also sometimes met with in England in the summer; 
indeed, on more than one occasion, when out birdsnesting with a keen old student 
of nature—Dr. John Grayling, of Sittingbourne, he has called my attention to a 
specimen of this species, conspicuous by its pied colouring: there is, however, no 
satisfactory evidence that it has nested in the British Isles, although an egg in my 
collection, taken somewhere about the year 1880 by Mr. John Woodgate, at Hadley 
(Herts.) certainly looks remarkably like that of ZL. excudvtor. 
The adult male of this species is of a pale bluish ash grey above, this colour 
becoming paler on the rump and upper tail-coverts; forehead, a line over each 
eye, and the scapulars white; wing black, with white’ bases and tips to the flights ; 
