GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 



77 



of devouring them. "If it were true/^ says he, "that this little 

 hawk had stuck them up for himself, how long would he be in feed- 

 ing on one or two hundred grasshoppers ? But if it be intended to 

 seduce the smaller birds to feed on these insects, in order to have 

 an opportunity of catching them, that number, or even one half, or 

 less, may be a good bait all winter,^' &c. &c. 



This is indeed a very pretty fanciful theory, and would entitle 

 our bird to the epithet Fowler^ perhaps with more propriety than 

 Lanius, or Butchei^; but notwithstanding the attention which Mr. 

 Heckewelder professes to have paid to this bird, he appears not 

 only to have been unacquainted that grasshoppers were in fact the 

 favorite food of this Ninekiller, but never once to have consideredj 

 that grasshoppers would be but a very insignificant and tasteless 

 bait for our winter birds, which are chiefly those of the finch kind, 

 that feed almost exclusively on hard seeds and gravel ; and among 

 whom five hundred grasshoppers might be stuck up on trees and 

 bushes, and remain there untouched by any of them forever. Be- 

 sides, where is his necessity of having recourse to such refined stra- 

 tagems, when he can at any time seize upon small birds by mere 

 force of flight? I have seen him, in an open field, dart after one 

 of our small sparrows, with the rapidity of an arrow, and kill it 

 almost instantly. Mr. William Bartram long ago informed me^, 

 that one of these Shrikes had the temerity to pursue a Snow-bird 

 (F. Hudsonia), into an open cage, which stood in the garden; and 

 before they could arrive to its assistance, had already strangled and 

 scalped it, tho he lost his liberty by the exploit. In shorty I am 

 of opinion, that his resolution and activity are amply sufficient to 

 enable him to procure these small birds whenever he wants them, 

 which I believe is never but when hard pressed by necessity, and 

 a deficiency of his favorite insects; and that the Crow or the Blue 

 Jay may with the same probability be supposed to be laying baits 

 for mice and flying squirrels when they are hoarding their Indian 

 corn, as he for birds while thus disposing of the exuberance of his 



