606 BRITISH BIRDS. 



LANIUS COLLURIO. 



EED-BACKED SHRIKE. 



(Plate 11.) 



Lanius collurio, Briss. Orn. ii. p. 151 (1760) ; Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 136 (1766) ; et 

 auctorum plurimorum — Latham, Omelin, Naitmann, Temminck, {Oray), 

 (Bonaparte), Degland, Oerbe, Newton, Dresser, &c. 



Lanius spinitorquus, Bechst. Naturg. Deutschl. ii. p. 392 (1791). 



Lanius dumetorum, Brehm, Vog. Deutschl. p. 234 (1831). 



Enneoctonus collurio (Linn.), Boie, Isis, 1826, p. 973. 



The Red-backed Shrike is by far the commonest Shrike met with in the 

 British Islands. It is a common and well-known^ though local, summer 

 visitor to most parts of England south of Yorkshire, being most numerous 

 in the extreme southern counties. Curiously enough, it does not apjDear 

 to have yet been noticed in Lincolnshire and is only occasionally seen in 

 Cornwall. In the northern counties of England it becomes much rarer; 

 whilst in Scotland it is of only accidental occurrence, usually on migration 

 (although instances are on record of its having nested there), chiefly in 

 the eastern counties. It has been met with in the Shetlands, where Dr. 

 Saxby was inclined to believe that a pair reared their young during the 

 summer of 1870. Its occurrence in Ireland has only once been recorded 

 'Zoologist,^ 1878, p. 437). A male specimen was shot on the 10th 

 of August in a glen near Castlereagh, county Down, about three miles 

 from Belfast ; and five or six other examples were said to have been in its 

 company. 



The Red-backed Shrike is a summer visitor to the ^vliole of the continent 

 of Europe up to lat. 64°, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, 

 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 migration. 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. More than one South- 

 African ornithologist states that it breeds during its visit to South Africa • 

 but such a very anomalous circumstance requires the production of the 

 nest and eggs before it can be accepted as a fact. Meyer's statement, quoted 

 by Morris, that this bird is a native of North America, is quite erroneous. 



