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Updated: June 20, 2025
Shells, difference in form of, in male and female Gasteropoda; beautiful colours and shapes of. Shield-drake, pairing with a common duck; New Zealand, sexes and young of. Shooter, J., on the Kaffirs; on the marriage-customs of the Kaffirs. Shrew-mice, odour of. Shrike, Drongo. Shrikes, characters of young. Shuckard, W.E., on sexual differences in the wings of Hymenoptera.
The varieties to be seen here include the South American pikas and shrikes, with their gay plumage. These shrikes better known as butcher-birds are so called from the cruelty with which they treat their prey.
The Saurophagus sulphuratus is typical of the great American tribe of tyrant-flycatchers. In its structure it closely approaches the true shrikes, but in its habits may be compared to many birds. I have frequently observed it, hunting a field, hovering over one spot like a hawk, and then proceeding on to another.
They evidently had had experiences with hawks and shrikes. Every minute or two they would all spring into the air as one bird, circle about for a moment, then alight upon the snow again. Occasionally one would perch upon a wire or grapevine, as if to keep watch and ward.
There has been an unusual number of shrikes the past fall and winter; like the hawks, they follow in the wake of the little birds and prey upon them. Some seasons pass and I never see a shrike. This year I have seen at least a dozen while passing along the road.
The Cardinal was hatched in a thicket of sweetbrier and blackberry. His father was a tough old widower of many experiences and variable temper. He was the biggest, most aggressive redbird in the Limberlost, and easily reigned king of his kind. Catbirds, king-birds, and shrikes gave him a wide berth, and not even the ever-quarrelsome jays plucked up enough courage to antagonize him.
On the morning of the Fourth of July, a cool, and in that remote part of the world a delightfully quiet day, I felt an unaccountable disinclination to make my usual visit to the shrikes. Refusing, however, to yield to that feeling, I forced myself to take the long walk, and seat myself in my usual place.
Of course I concluded from all this that the young shrikes were out, and I longed with all my heart to stay and watch the charming process of changing from the ungainly creatures they were at that moment to the full-grown and feathered beauties they would be when they appeared on the tree; to see them getting their education, learning to follow their parents about, and finally seeking their own food, still keeping together in a family party, as I had seen them once before, elsewhere, lovely, innocent younglings whom surely no one could find it in his heart to call "butchers" or "assassins."
In the forest areas of the hotter regions it is different; there the birds form large gatherings or "wandering bands," composed of all the different species found in each district, associated with birds of other families wood-peckers, tyrant-birds, bush shrikes, and many others.
Sometimes, when madam left her nest for refreshment, she would sweep by a bird who happened to be on the tree, thus making him fly, but she never followed or showed any special interest in him. Whatever other shrikes may be or do, at least this pair, and the three or four others who visited them, were amiable with their neighbors, small as well as great.
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