United States or Kuwait ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Their small cousins, the Chicadees, came, too, at breakfast time, and in our daily travelling, Ruffed Grouse, Ravens, Pine Grosbeaks, Bohemian Chatterers, Hairy Woodpeckers, Shrikes, Tree-sparrows, Linnets, and Snowbirds enlivened the radiant sunlit scene.
A bird having a broad black band through the eye is probably a shrike, and if the bird in question habitually sits on an exposed branch or other point of vantage, and from thence swoops on to the ground to secure some insect, the probability of its being a butcher-bird becomes a certainty. Closely related to the shrikes are the minivets.
On the Vidua, 'Ibis, vol. iii. 1861, p. 133. On the Drongo- shrikes, Jerdon, ibid. vol. i. p. 435. On the vernal moult of the Herodias bubulcus, Mr. S.S. Allen, in 'Ibis, 1863, p. 33. But the believer in the gradual modification of species will be far from feeling surprise at finding gradations of all kinds.
Probably not over 200 are captured, however, during a year. The ling-an', a spring snare, is the most used for catching birds. I saw one of them catch four shrikes, called ta'-la, in a single afternoon, and a fifth one was caught early the next morning. Pl. XLVII shows the ling-an' as it is set, and also shows ta'-la as he is caught.
There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham Junction. Another pair came back several seasons to a particular part of the wires, near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the wire equally near London. The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which, soon after passing Redhill, stretches away on the right.
Swifts, Senegal swallows, and common dark-bellied swallows appeared at Kizinga in the beginning of October: other birds, as drongo shrikes, a bird with a reddish bill, but otherwise like a grey linnet, keep in flocks yet. The kite came sooner than the swallows; I saw the first at Bangweolo on the 20th July, 1868. 1st November, 1868.
This species may be said to be the warbler of the Western Himalayas, and, as such, it has been made the subject of a separate essay. The butcher-birds are the best-known members of this fraternity. Undoubtedly passerine in structure, shrikes are as indubitably raptores by nature. They are nothing less than pocket hawks.
No signs of life in nest or neighborhood, save the yearning cry of the lark, as it alighted on the top of the thorn-tree. After I was convinced that, in some unaccountable manner, the shrikes had been spirited away before they were half big enough, I changed my place to the other side of the tree, out of sight from the nest.
The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to build their nests. Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires; from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to the wire.
A friend and fellow bird-lover, driving one evening up this road, startled a bird from the nest, and, checking her horse, looked on in amazement while, one after another, six full-grown shrikes emerged from the tree and flew away. Pondering this strange circumstance she drove on, and when returning looked sharply out for the thorn-tree.
Word Of The Day