BIRDS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 
239 
gone out. Without a word we crawled into the tiny dog-tent, and draw¬ 
ing the blankets over us tried to court sleep. 
Next day about noon a Cuban came down the rough road driving a 
sorry-looking horse attached to a rude cart. A blanket-covered object 
lay on the floor, and when I asked him if he had anything to sell he 
crossed himself and answered, “ JVo, senor, es un muerto; a dead 
Spaniard. I found him near the arroyo. He was stabbed, senor, but I 
found this held to his lips,” holding up the cross we had seen the night 
before. 
Harry and I took charge of the remains, and together we buried him. 
The cross we replaced on his breast, and on a rough headboard we cut 
the words ‘‘Beltran Navarro, a Soldier of Spain.” 
When we were permitted to go to Santiago we had a special mass said 
for him and for his dead in far-off Spain. 
Jersey City, N. J. 
Familiar Birds of Southern 
California. 
BY ELIZABETH AND JOSEPH GRINNELL. 
THE BUTCHER BIRD. 
to THE novice there is sometimes some diffi¬ 
culty in distinguishing the shrike from the 
mocking bird. There is a little similarity 
in color and size, but in markings, and form of head 
and beak, the difference is great. Compared with the 
mocker, the California shrike, which is our ‘ ‘ butcher 
bird,” is more grey than brown, and the white of 
the wings and tail is more conspicuous. The tips 
of all the tail feathers are white, as is also the throat. A 
“black bridle” on either side of the forehead, which 
includes the eyes and meets at the base of the black 
beak, renders this bird easily distinguishable. The beak 
is hooked, larger and shorter than that of the mocker, but the 
whole bird from tip to tip is more than an inch shorter. The 
sexes differ but slightly or not at all. While the butcher bird 
has come honestly by his name, he does not persist in crime to 
the exclusion of turning an honest penny for the farmer. He 
dotes upon the Jerusalem cricket, that wicked little fellow that 
digs holes in the sides of our potatoes, and is as fond of mice 
as he is of small snakes. He has been seen to watch for and 
snatch a gopher throwing up its solitary mound on the mesa. 
True, he does eat an occasional small bird, and it cannot be de¬ 
nied that he impales his prey on orange thorns and barbed wire 
fences. What purposes he has in view is not perfectly under¬ 
stood. Possibly it is for reasons of taste. He may prefer his 
meat cured, or he may have learned from his fathers to lay by 
something for a rainy day. Or he may do it from pure mis¬ 
chief. In any event we have found small lizards, birds, even 
downy chickens, Jerusalem crickets, mice and beetles, impaled 
—always by the neck. There is method even in the seeming 
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