i -The Great Grey Shrike. 2 — The Red-backed Shrike. 3— The Woodchat Shrike. 
are black, with white ends to most of the feathers, the outer tail-feathers being 
broadly tipped with white. On the wing are two conspicuous patches of white, the 
first formed by the white base of the primaries, and the other by the white base to 
the outer secondaries. Young birds are shaded with brown, both above and on the 
breast, the under surface of the body being barred with brown margins to the feathers. 
The two species of Great Grey Shrike are very conspicuous birds wherever they 
occur, from their habit of selecting the top of a bush or small tree from which to take 
a good survey of the surrounding ground. They devour all kinds of food, insects, 
frogs, lizards, and mice being eaten in summer, but in winter mice and small 
birds form their prey. The Shrikes have a very strongly hooked bill like that of a 
Hawk, and they are called ‘ Butcher-birds,’ from their habit of impaling then- 
prey on thorns, and here, in the Shrike’s ‘ larder,’ as it is called, may often be found 
hanging the remains of the bodies of his victims. 
The nest is a somewhat rough structure of twigs, grass and moss, and the eggs, 
from five to seven in number, are greenish-white or brownish-white, with spots of 
olive or greenish-brown. 
Pallas’s Great Grey Shrike 
( Lanins sibiricus). This is another 
winter visitor, coming from Siberia 
and Northern Russia, where it breeds. 
In habits and form it exactly resembles 
the foregoing species, from which it 
differs in only having one white wing- 
patch instead of two, the inner 
secondaries being entirely back. 
Pallas’s Great Grey Shrike. 
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