GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 



75 



When we compare the beak of this species, with his legs and 

 claws, they appear to belong to two very different orders of birds ; 

 the former approaching in its conformation to that of the accipi- 

 trine ; the latter to those of the pies ; and, indeed in his food and 

 manners he is assimilated to both. For tho man has arranged and 

 subdivided this numerous class of animals into separate tribes and 

 families, yet nature has united these to each other by such nice gra- 

 dations, and so intimately, that it is hardly possible to determine 

 where one tribe ends or the succeeding commences. We therefore 

 find several eminent naturalists classing this genus of birds with 

 the accipitrine, others with the pies. Like the former he preys, 

 occasionally, on other birds ; and like the latter on insects, parti- 

 cularly grasshoppers, which I believe to be his principal food; 

 having at almost all times, even in winter, found them in his sto- 

 mach. In the month of December, and while the country was 

 deeply covered with snow, I shot one of these birds, near the head 

 w^aters of the Mohawk river, in the state of New York, the stomach 

 of which was entirely filled with large black spiders. He was of a 

 much purer white, above, than any I have since met with ; tho evi- 

 dently of the same species with the present; and I think it pro- 

 bable, that the males become lighter colored as they advance in 

 age, till the minute transverse lines of brown on the lower parts 

 almost disappear. 



In his manners he has more resemblance to the pies than to 

 birds of prey, particularly in the habit of carrying off his surplus 

 food as if to hoard it for future exigencies ; with this difference, 

 that Crows, Jays, Magpies, &c. conceal theirs at random, in holes 

 and crevices, where perhaps it is forgotten or never again found; 

 while the Butcher-bird sticks his on thorns and bushes, where it 

 shrivels in the sun, and soon becomes equally useless to the hoarder. 

 Both retain the same habits in a state of confinement, whatever the 

 food may be that is presented to them. 



This habit of the Shrike of seizing and impaling grasshoppers 



