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The thorny tree thus becomes the storehouse of the shrike, where he hangs up his superfluous spoil for future use, just as the crows, magpies and jays, make their secret deposits in chinks of walls and the hollows of trees. It is no argument against this theory, that the shrike sometimes leaves these stores without returning to them.
"You may know this Shrike on sight without hearing him sing and perhaps you do not expect a cannibal bird to be a singer.
I continued my scrutiny of the bushes, when I saw a large bird, with some object in its beak, hopping along on a low branch near the ground. It disappeared from my sight for a few moments, then came up through the undergrowth into the top of a young maple where some of the finches had alighted, and I beheld the shrike.
He saw a bird, a sparrow he thinks, fly against the side of a horse and fill his beak with hair from the loosened coat of the animal. He saw a shrike pursue a chickadee, when the latter escaped by taking refuge in a small hole in a tree.
If you see an unknown bird about your orchard or fields in November or December of a bluish grayish complexion, with dusky wings and tail that show markings of white, flying rather heavily from point to point, or alighting down in the stubble occasionally, it is pretty sure to be the shrike. Nature never tires of repeating and multiplying the same species.
It builds a warm, compact nest in the mountains and dense woods, and lays six eggs, which would indicate a rapid increase. I myself seldom see more than two each year, and before I became an observer of birds I never saw any. In size the shrike is a little inferior to the blue jay, with much the same form.
Twilight was just falling, and the owl had come up from his snug retreat in the hollow trunk, and was waiting for the darkness to deepen before venturing forth. I was first advised of his presence by seeing him approaching swiftly on silent, level wing. The shrike did not see him till the owl was almost within the branches.
Yet ther was a lustie man, and no less valiante, stood behind a tree within halfe a musket shot, and let his arrows flie at them. He was seen shoot 3. arrowes, which were all avoyded. He stood 3. shot of a musket, till one taking full aime at him, and made y^e barke or splinters of y^e tree fly about his ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shrike, and away they wente all of them.
Its beak is very stout, and its tail very long; and though it would attract attention anywhere, it is hardly to be called handsome or graceful. Its notes such of them as I heard, that is are mostly guttural, with little or nothing of the screaming quality which distinguishes the blue jay's voice. To my ear they were often suggestive of the Northern shrike.
They are among the most familiar and constant of our winter guests, although very much less numerous at that time than in spring and autumn, when the fields and lanes are fairly alive with them. A kind word must be said for the shrike, also, who during the three coldest months is to be seen on the Common oftener than any other of our native birds. There, at all events, he is doing a good work.
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