LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE. 
347 
black passes along the front, through each eye, half way down 
the side of the neck ; eye, dark hazel, sunk below the eyebrow ; 
tail, cuneiform, the four middle feathers wholly black ; the 
four exterior ones, on each side, tipt more and more with 
white to the outer one, which is nearly all white ; whole lower 
parts, white ; and in some specimens, both of males and females, 
marked with transverse lines of very pale brown ; bill and legs, 
black. 
The female is considerably darker both above and below, 
but the black does not reach so high on the front ; it is also 
rather less in size. 
According to Dr Richardson, it is a more northern bird than L. borealis , and 
does not advance farther north in summer than the 54° of latitude, and it 
attains that parallel only in the meridian of the warm and sandy plains of the 
Saskatchewan, which enjoy an earlier spring, and longer summer, than the 
densely wooded country betwixt them and Hudson’s Bay. Its manners are 
precisely similar to those of L. borealis , feeding chiefly on grasshoppers, which 
are exceedingly numerous. Its nest was found in a bush of willows, built 
of twigs of Artemesice and dried grass, and lined with feathers ; the eggs, six 
in number, were very pale yellowish gray, with many irregular and confluent 
spots of oil green, interspersed with a few of smoke gray. 
/ The merit of unravelling this species from several very closely allied to it 
in its native country, and from that to which it approaches nearest, the L. 
excubitor of Europe, is due to Mr Swainson ; the chief distinctive characters 
given by that naturalist are the small proportions of the bill, the frontal feathers 
crossed by a narrow band of deep black, the black stripe on the side of the 
head encircling the upper margin of the eyelid, lateral scales of the tarsus being 
divided in several pieces, the shorter length of the wing when closed, and in 
the tail being more graduated ; the total length is nine inches, six lines. 
4. Lanius elegans, Sw. — White-crowned Shrike. 
Described by Mr Swainson, from a specimen in the British Museum, to 
which it was presented from the Fur Countries by the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
pany. It may at once be distinguished from the other American Shrikes, 
by the much greater quantity of white on the wings and tail ; its narrower 
tail-feathers, longer tarsi, and less curved claws ; the length is about nine 
inches. 
5. Lanius (?) natka, Penn. — Natka Shrike. 
This species, the Nootka Shrike of Dr Latham, from Nootka Sound, on 
the northwest coast of North America, seems to be of such dubious authority,, 
that little can be said regarding it Ed. 
