Bethel, Maine
1903
June 5
(No 2)
  The most interesting experience of the morning remains
to be chronicled. I was returning over the intervale and
within 200 yds. of the railroad when a Shrike (L.l. migrans)
started from a maple and flew off up the road, carrying a
bird in its bill. It alighted first on a fence post, next on
a bush heap near the railroad. I got within twenty yards
of it each time. As I was approaching it it worked busily &
nervously tearing at its prey & eating portions of it. Finally
it circled back past me and flew out into a large field where
it alighted on a fence post. Before I could get near it again
it flew a fourth time leaving its victim which I found was
a Bank Swallow. It had eaten the head completely off and
had impaled the loose skins of the lower neck on a sharp
upright splinter that projected above the post. After examining the
Swallow I walked off a few rods when the Shrike immediately
returned to it and carried it off across the road to a small
half dead willow that grew by a wall within 50 yards of a house.
I followed and had the great pleasure of watching the Shrike
impale the Swallow on a short, sharp stub of a dead twig.
It performed this operation precisely in the manner of the
Northern Shrike that I saw hang up a field mouse at Ball's Hill
a dozen or 20 years ago, ie by drawing the bird against
the stub. Standing a little below it it pulled violently &
jerkily for several minutes often fluttering its wings either to
keep its balance or to gain greater force & occasionally stopping
to rest for a moment. Finally it few away. On
examining the Swallow I found it very firmly fixed with 
the prong driven through the skin & surface muscles of the
breast. From a lower branch of the same willow &
similarly impaled on a short dead prong driven through
the skin of its neck hung a female Bluebird that had evidently
Migrant Shrike