CRESTED SHRIKE 
309 
There are now so few of the Crested Shrikes left in 
the district that it is difficult to infer whether, in 
their original numbers, they had any migratory 
movements ; I am inclined to think that they had, 
like the White-throated Thickhead and the Flame 
Robin, a tendency to leave the forests and move to 
the better-timbered parts close to Geelong in the 
autumn. I have seen birds at the Dog Rocks in the 
winter, but have not known them breed there. 
The call is a single-noted whistle, high-pitched 
though not loud ; the bird also draws attention to 
itself by the sharp noise it makes in cracking, with its 
powerful bill, pieces of bark and twigs in the search 
for the timber-dwelling insects which form its food. 
The Crested Shrike builds, in the month of October 
or November, a cup-shaped nest of grasses coated 
externally with cobwebs and lined with fine grass 
and rootlets. It is placed in the topmost upright fork, 
strong enough to bear it, of a tall gum tree or sapling, 
usually at a height of not less than 30 feet from the 
ground, and is the most difficult to find of any of 
our birds' nests. The eggs are usually two, white 
with fine purplish spots all over them. 
Up till the end of the nineties these birds were in 
fair numbers, and nested regularly, in the bush on 
each side of the Grub Lane between Ocean Grove 
and Drysdale. This country is now so largely cleared 
that the Shrike, with other bush-loving species, is 
on its way to extinction in that part, but it is still 
to be met with at Airey's Inlet. 
