90 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
whole ground-colour deeply flushed with rich 
pinkish-red, and in another it is dusky, ashy brown, 
with darker brown or grey spots. The eggs are 
four or five in number. The male bird is con- 
spicuously marked, with his chestnut back, grey 
breast, and heavy black streak across the eye, and 
he is fond of posting himself on the top of a bush 
or some other conspicuous position near his nest, 
partly to watch for the bumble-bees, beetles and 
other insects on which he feeds, but also to guard 
his own peculiar domain. Two or three shrikes 
are almost always to be seen at any time towards 
midsummer, for instance, on the telegraph wires of 
the railway as the train passes between Slough and 
Reading, their nests being concealed in some 
neighbouring bush or hedge. When an intruder 
trespasses too near, the Shrike follows him uneasily 
about, with a short, harsh note. The hen bird is 
quite different in appearance, being duller reddish- 
brown above, with a paler breast, mottled and lined 
with grey, and without the dark eye-stripe. The 
Shrike has all the air of a small bird of prey, 
and as he ranks in size between the Thrushes 
and the whole multitude of smaller finches and 
warblers, he is the bugbear of a very numerous 
variety of species, on the young of which he often 
preys, and which show in consequence their anti- 
pathy by pursuing him as they do a hawk 
