The White-rumped Shrikes 
a dozen of these birds in various places, having no apparent relation to 
each other, unless, indeed, they be offspring of one vicious pair.” 
Now this note, common at this season all along the Santa Barbara 
coast, I never heard elsewhere until we arrived at Santa Cruz Island in 
April, 1915. Scrat, scrat, scrat, cried the first bird we met in Prisoners’ 
Harbor, and he might have been the very bird we had listened to in 
August, as he shouted from a fence-post overlooking Neighbor Johnson’s 
bean-field. x\nd all the shrikes of Santa Cruz Island scratted us in the 
same tones. 
I am thus explicit regarding the testimony on this point because 
certain friends who, at my instigation (people in glass houses always 
throw stones), have collected August Shrikes at Santa Barbara, report 
that they can detect no difference between them and the mainland form, 
L. 1 . gambeli. Perhaps the plumage characters assigned (with some show 
of justice) to L. 1 . anthonyi bleach out and become unrecognizable in late 
summer. Perhaps the ear-test is, on occasion, more trustworthy than the 
eye-test. Perhaps there are here differences worthy of recognition as 
between gambeli and anthonyi , but differences which inhere in psychology 
rather than in shades of pigment or length of toenails. A distinction in 
notes or song may be as valid (and I hold that it is) for purposes of sub¬ 
specific discrimination, or “race” determination, as length of bill or 
breadth of wing-bars. Anyhow, we are very sure that there is a differ¬ 
ence here; and we are pleased to find that Dr. Mearns bears us out, for he 
says, 1 speaking of his experiences on Santa Cruz Island: “At night when 
we went out to shoot bats, Shrikes would dash about us uttering loud 
harsh screams, different from the voices of any Shrikes I have heard 
elsewhere.” 
A nest of the Island Shrike, found six feet up in an acacia tree at 
Prisoners’ Harbor, was empty on the 4th of April (1915), but on the even¬ 
ing of the 8th it held one egg of a large, light-colored type. On the after¬ 
noon of the nth, three days later, it held six eggs, which we took, together 
with the nest. This was throwing them in pretty fast, and reminded us 
of the “two eggs a day and three on Sunday” record of the model hen of 
childhood's tradition. However, two eggs of this set were strikingly 
large and light-colored, and three were of a small, dark type; while the 
sixth, which might have belonged to either, so far as its mediating appear¬ 
ance was concerned, probably should be credited to the “large, light” 
account. On the 19th, eight days later, we found a more hastily con¬ 
structed nest in a pollard willow, near the site of the first, and undoubtedly 
the product of the same birds, though it was still empty. Two days 
later, at five p. m., this new discovery held three eggs, and on the following 
1 Auk, Vol. XV., July, 1898, p. 263. 
600 
