The White-rumped Shrikes 
THIS slightly darker form appears to be well established on the Santa 
Barbara Islands, where it is supposed to be strictly resident. It was 
originally described from Santa Cruz Island; but its numbers there have 
possibly suffered from the limelight of “scientific” scrutiny ensuing. One 
party, in 1907, took off sixteen “skins”; whereas I did not see half that 
many birds in an eighteen-day visit in the spring of 1915. For some 
unaccountable (?) reason, these Island Shrikes are universally charac¬ 
terized as “very shy.” Dr. Mearns says: 1 “In the daytime they never 
permitted us to come within range of them.” Dr. Joseph Grinnell says 2 
of one defiant fellow who persisted in singing in his neighborhood: “The 
rustle of the tent door or the click of a gun lock, however, was sufficient 
to send him up over the ridge, not to appear again for hours.” And 
Mr. Rollo H. Beck, who, nevertheless, managed to secure a modicum of 
ten birds, testifies:» “They were the wildest land birds I ever saw, 
by far.” 
Island Shrikes are early breeders. The first brood is brought off 
in March and a second by the first of May. It is my conviction that the 
matured birds, at least of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands, in order to 
escape the ensuing drought, repair to the mainland. At any rate, along 
the Santa Barbara coast, where L. 1 . gambeli is at best a rare breeder, 
there is a sudden accession, or irruption, of Shrikes in July. For the 
ensuing two months they are greatly in evidence, not so much for their 
numbers, which are moderate, as for their excessive and unique noisiness. 
An entry in the notebook, under date of August 11, 1911, faithfully records 
first impressions: “A series of violent, explosive, and altogether offen¬ 
sive notes has been traced definitely to the local Shrikes. I have heard 
the rudiments of the same sounds before from eastern birds, but these 
local sounds are from three to seven times harsher. Your Santa Barbara 
Shrike [sic] is a very pirate, and he bursts out, with no apparent provoca¬ 
tion at all, into a perfect torrent of abuse—excoriation is the word which 
most accurately describes it: Scrat, scrat, scrat, scrat, scrat, scrat, scrat, 
scrat, with somewhat diminishing intensity. The outburst lasts for 
several seconds, and consists of a nearly uniform series of harsh, rasp¬ 
ing notes of an intensity and repulsiveness calculated to shatter the 
nerves of a cat. However, I am not even sure that this bird is displeased, 
for the malediction is uttered oftener in solitude than elsewhere, and is 
delivered from fence-post or telephone wire without any apparent regard 
to audience. It seems to mark rather an overflow of good spirits, such 
as we might expect from an otherwise unoccupied devil. This evening 
in going across country to a farmer neighbor’s, I heard not one but half 
1 Auk, Vol. XV., July, 1898, p. 263. 
2 Pub. I., Pasadena Acad. Sci., Aug., 1897, pp. 19, 20. 
3 So quoted by Dr. Edgar Mearns, Auk, Vol. XV., p. 261. 
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