THE SHEIKE, OR BUTCHER BIRD. 
93 
It only takes a luncli of a small song-bird occasionally, as 
tlie hnmming bird does of the spider. It selects very much 
the same sort of location for its nest as the mocking birds, and 
has much the same haunts ; and, in a word, I have no doubt 
that these two birds are regarded with more thorough dread 
and detestation by the small birds than all the hawks that ever 
flew put together ; for while the mocking bird beats them sing- 
ing until they are ashamed to hear their own voices ; he adds 
insult to injury in frightening them out of their wits by his imp- 
ish imitations. Then the shrike runs them in the same way, 
but it is in bloody earnest, so far as he is concerned, so that the 
timid little creatures must be as sadly puzzled between the 
playful elf and its ghost-like image, as I was with my new 
variety. There is another droll coincidence. The shrike is 
not more the terror of the small birds, than the humming 
bird is of the large ones. It is the most formidable enemy 
the hawks and eagles have, and almost drives them mad 
with its swift and torturing strokes at their eyes. I have 
seen many an eagle flying as if possessed, with loud screams 
of agony, while a pair of humming birds, coolly resting on 
the top of its imperial crown, were making the feathers fly 
therefrom in a long trail upon the air. 
We have in America two varieties of the shrike. The 
one exhibited in our plate is the loggerhead shrike, which is 
in the act of stooping upon a painted finch. The habitation 
of this shrike is principally in the southern and middle re- 
gions of the United States, while the great American shrike 
frequents from the middle States northward to the Canadas, 
So audacious is this latter bird, and such the power of its neck 
and shoulders, that I saw one that had just been captured in a 
gentleman's parlor in Boston, during a late hard winter, that 
had shattered the stout plate-glass of the window-pane in dash- 
ing at a canary bird which it had perceived, caged, inside. 
The little captive was slain by the savage aggressor before 
rescue was possible on the part of those who witnessed the 
scene. 
