76 



GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 



and other insects on thorns, has given rise to an opinion, that he 

 places their carcases there by way of baits, to aUure small birds 

 to them, while he himself lies in ambush to sm^prise and destroy 

 them. In this however they appear to allow him a greater portion 

 of reason and contrivance than he seems entitled to, or than other 

 circumstances will altogether warrant ; for we find that he not only 

 serves grasshoppers in this manner, but even small birds them- 

 selves, as those have assured me who have kept them in cages in 

 this country, and amused themselves with their manoeuvres. If 

 so, we might as well suppose the farmer to be inviting Crows to his 

 corn when he hangs up their carcases around it, as the Butcher- 

 bird to be decoying small birds by a display of the dead bodies of 

 their comrades! 



In the "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society,^' 

 vol. IV, p. 124, the reader may find a long letter on this subject 

 from Mr. John Heckewelder, of Bethlehem, to Dr. Barton; the sub- 

 stance of which is as follows. That on the 17th of December, 1795, 

 he (Mr. Heckewelder) went to visit a young orchard which had been 

 planted a few weeks before, and was surprised to observe on every 

 one of the trees one, and on some two and three grasshoppers, stuck 

 down on the sharp thorny branches; that on enquiring of his tenant 

 the reason of this, he informed him, that they were stuck there 

 by a small bird of prey called by the Germans Neuntoedter (Nine- 

 killer), which caught and stuck nine grasshoppers a day; and he 

 supposed that as the bird itself never fed on grasshoppers, it must 

 do it for pleasure. Mr. Heckewelder now recollected that one of 

 those Nine-killers had, many years before, taken a favorite bird of 

 his out of his cage at the window; since which he had paid parti- 

 cular attention to it; and being perfectly satisfied that it lived en- 

 tirely on mice and small birds, and, moreover, observing the grass- 

 hoppers on the trees all fixed in natural positions, as if alive, he 

 began to conjecture that this was done to decoy such small birds as 

 feed on these insects to the spot, that he might have an opportunity 



