Bailly informs us that it “ arrives in Savoy in pairs from tlie 20tli to the 25th of April, and takes up its 
quarters at once in the places where it intends to breed and pass the summer, namely, the borders of damp 
woods ill the plains and on the mountains in the neighbourhood, the great trees bordering the roads, parks 
and all situations clothed with copses, thorn-bushes in cultivated fields, and marshes interspersed with high 
trees. Towards the middle of May it constructs its nest in the trees, rarely among the bushes, even the 
higher ones. In its actions and manners it resembles the Great Grey Shrike, but is less mistrustful than that 
bird. At the pairing-season, when most monogamous birds quit the society of their kind to live alone, 
this species assembles in small parties of five, six, or more, which pursue and peck each other reciprocally 
without indicting any injury, and, the game being over, repose all together on the branch of the same tree.” 
Mr. Howard Saunders informs me that during his recent visit to Andalucia, he did not observe it in that 
province. On the other hand Lord Lilford states that it is not uncommon there, that it is “ a rare summer 
visitor to the island of Corfu,” where he “ obtained three specimens in May, 1858,” and says it is “abundant 
in Montenegro in August.” 
In Mr. W. H. Simpson’s “ Ornithological Notes from Mesolonghi and Southern vEtolia,” published in ‘ The 
Ibis’ for 1860, that gentleman remarks : — 
“ A stray pair of Blackbird and Song-Thrush, out of the docks that frequent the delta of the Phidaris at 
the foot of the unsealed precipices of Mount Varassovo itj winter, may remain behind to breed; but the duties 
of the sylvan chorus are j)erformed by innumerable warblers, which, however, prefer the bushy outskirts 
and shun the depths of the forest, as does also the conspicuous Lanius rnbior, which, next to the \Toodchat, 
is the commonest Shrike of Greece.” 
The food consists of insects of various orders, small birds, shrewmice, &c. 
The adult male has the forehead, lores, space above and below the eye, and the ear-coverts black; 
occiput, nape, and back ash-grey ; wings black ; a spot or s])eculum of white at the base of the primaries ; 
outer tail-feather, on each side, vvhite, the next white, with a fine line of black along the shaft, the third 
white, with a large spot of black near the tiji, the fourth with a larger black spot, and the four middle 
feathers entirely black ; under surface white, with a wash of rose-pink on the chest and danks ; bill and feet 
black. 
The female is similar in her general colouring; but the black on the head is duller, that on the wings of 
a browner tint, and the roseate hue of the danks is paler. 
The young of the year of both sexes are without the black band on the forehead, that part during the first 
winter being of a dull ash-grey ; after the spring moult the black band and the roseate tint begin to appear. 
The Plate represents a male and a female, of the size of life, on a l)ranch of a kind of wild Bullace, 
gathered by myself at Barton, in Bedfordshire. 
