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GREAT AMERICAN SHRIKE. 



favorite food. Both the former and the latter retain the same 

 habits in a state of confinement; the one filling every seam and 

 chink of his cage with grain, crumbs of bread, &c. and the other 

 sticking up, not only insects, but flesh, and the bodies of such birds 

 as are thrown in to him, on nails or sharpened sticks, fixed up for 

 the purpose. Nor, say others, is this practice of the Shrike diffi- 

 cult to be accounted for. Nature has given to this bird a strong, 

 sharp and powerful beak, a broad head, and great strength in the 

 muscles of his neck ; but his legs, feet and claws are by no means 

 proportionably strong; and are unequal to the task of grasping 

 and tearing his prey, like those of the Owl and Falcon kind. He 

 therefore wisely avails himself of the powers of the former, both in 

 strangling his prey, and in tearing it to pieces while feeding. 



The character of the Butcher-bird is entitled to no common 

 degree of respect. His activity is visible in all his motions ; his 

 courage and intrepidity beyond every other bird of his size (one 

 of his own tribe only excepted, L. Tyrannus, or King-bird) ; and in 

 affection for his young he is surpassed by no other. He associates 

 with them in the latter part of summer, the whole family hunting 

 in company. He attacks the largest Hawk or Eagle in their de- 

 fence, with a resolution truly astonishing; so that all of them re- 

 spect him ; and on every occasion decline the contest. As the 

 snows of winter approach, he descends from the mountainous fo- 

 rests, and from the regions of the north, to the more cultivated 

 parts of the country, hovering about our hedge-rows, orchards and 

 meadows, and disappears again early in April. 



The Great American Shrike is ten inches in length, and thir- 

 teen in extent; the upper part of the head, neck and back is pale 

 cinereous; sides of the head nearly white, crossed with a bar of 

 black that passes from the nostril thro the eye to the middle of the 

 neck; the whole under parts, in some specimens, are nearly white, 

 in others more dusky, and thickly marked with minute transverse 

 curving lines of light brown ; the wings are black, tipt with white, 



