Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 
of English sparrows they kill in a season, as if wanton carnage 
were ever justifiable. 
Not even a hawk itself can produce the consternation among 
a flock of sparrows that the harsh, rasping voice of the butcher- 
bird creates, for escape they well know to be difficult before the 
small ogre swoops down upon his victim, and carries it off to 
impale it on a thorn or frozen twig, there to devour it later 
piecemeal. Every shrike thus either impales or else hangs up, as 
a butcher does his meat, more little birds of many kinds, field- 
mice, grasshoppers, and other large insects than it can hope to 
devour in a week of bloody orgies. Field-mice are perhaps its 
favorite diet, but even snakes are not disdained. 
More contemptible than the actual slaughter of its victims, if 
possible, is the method by which the shrike often lures and 
sneaks upon his prey. Hiding in a clump of bushes in the meadow 
or garden, he imitates with fiendish cleverness the call-notes of 
little birds that come in cheerful response, hopping and flitting 
within easy range of him. His bloody work is finished in a 
trice. Usually, however, it must be owned, the shrike’s hunt- 
ing habits are the reverse of sneaking. Perched on a point of 
vantage on some tree-top or weather-vane, his hawk-like eye 
can detect a grasshopper going through the grass fifty yards 
away. 
What is our surprise when some fine warm day in March, 
just before our butcher, ogre, sneak, and fiend leaves us for colder 
regions, to hear him break out into song ! Love has warmed 
even his cold heart, and with sweet, warbled notes on the tip of 
a beak that but yesterday was reeking with his victim’s blood, 
he starts for Canada, leaving behind him the only good impres- 
sion he has made during a long winter’s visit. 
Bohemian Waxwing 
(Ampelis garrulus) Waxwing family 
Called also : BLACK-THROATED WAX WING ; LAPLAND 
WAXWING ; SILKTA 1 L 
Length — 8 to 9.5 inches. A little smaller than the robin. 
Male and Female — General color drab, with faint brownish wash 
above, shading into lighter gray below. Crest conspicuous, 
88 
