34 BIRDS OF CALIFORNIA AFFECTING FRUIT INDUSTRY. 
The shrike resembles a bird of prey in form of beak and, to a cer. 
tain extent, in food habits. Unlike the true birds of prey, however, its 
feet are not provided with talons for seizing prey and holding it 
securely while it is being torn into pieces. Whenever the shrike cap- 
tures game that must be torn apart it presses it firmly down into a 
forked branch where it can readily be dissected. 
The habit of the shrike of storing food apparently for future con- 
sumption has often been noticed. When food is abundant surplus 
captures are hung on thorns, sharp twigs, or, in recent times, the 
barbs of wire fences until needed; but as such occasions. seldom arise, 
nine-tenths of this stored food is wasted so far as the shrike is 
concerned. Various more or less plausible explanations of this 
habit have been offered, but the simplest and most natural seems to 
be that much of the time the bird hunts simply for the pleasure and 
excitement of the chase, and as prey is often captured when hunger 
has already been satisfied it is stored for future use. It is the same 
instinct and lust for slaughter that prompts man to kill game that 
he can not use. The habit seems to be manifested also in a somewhat 
different way by the crow and magpie, which store up bits of glass 
or bright metal for which they can have no possible use. In the 
case of the shrike, however, the habit is useful to man if not to 
the bird, for most of its prey consists of noxious creatures, the de- 
struction of which is a decided benefit. 
The diet of the shrike and that of the sparrow hawk are almost 
exactly alike. It is a curious wlustration of two species standing 
far apart systematically but by special modification approaching 
each other in food habits. The sparrow hawk has all the equipment 
of a carnivorous bird, but owing to its diminutive size its attacks 
are necessarily confined to the smaller kinds of prey, largely insects. 
The shrike, on the other hand, is a member of a group almost 
purely insectivorous, but it is so large and strong and has a beak 
so modified that in addition to its ordinary diet of insects, it is able 
on occasions to capture and tear apart small birds and mammals. 
While at present the two birds subsist upon much the same diet it 
is evident that their food habits have been modified in different 
ways. The natural food of the hawk family as a whole is vertebrate 
animals, to which some of its members, including our little sparrow 
hawk, have added a large percentage, of insects. The normal food 
of the shrike is insects, to which on occasions it adds the smaller 
species of vertebrates. 
Like the birds of prey and some other birds, the shrike habitually 
disgorges the indigestible portions of its food after the nutritive part 
has been digested. The bones and hair of mice are rolled into com- 
pact pellets in the stomach and finally disgorged. From examination 
of these a very good idea of the shrike’s food may be gained. 
