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V THE BUTCHER-BIRD “BUTCHER-BIRD” is not a very pretty name, but it is expressive and appropriate, and so is likely to stick quite as long as the more bookish word “shrike,” which is the bird’s other title. It comes from its owner’s habit of impaling the carcasses of its prey upon thorns, as a butcher hangs upon a hook the body of a pig or other animal that he has slaughtered. In a place
like the
Public Garden of Boston, if a shrike happens to make it his
hunting-ground for
a week or two, you may find here and there in the hawthorn-trees the
body of a
mouse or the headless trunk of an English sparrow spitted upon a thorn.
Grasshoppers are said to be treated in a similar manner, but I have
never met
with the bird’s work in the grasshopper season. The shrike
commonly
seen in the Northern States is a native of the far north, and comes
down to our
latitude only in cold weather. He travels singly, and if he finds a
place to
suit him, a place where the living is good, he will often remain almost
in the
same spot for weeks together. In size
and
appearance he resembles the mockingbird. His colors are gray, black,
and white,
his tail is long, and his bill is hooked like a hawk’s. He likes a
perch
from which he can see a good distance about him. A telegraph wire
answers his
purpose very well, but his commonest seat is the very tip of a tallish
tree. If
you look across a field in winter and descry a medium-sized bird
swaying on the
topmost twig of a lonesome tree, balancing himself by continual
tiltings of his
long tail, you may set him down as most likely a butcher-bird. His flight
is
generally not far from the ground, but as he draws near the tree in
which he
means to alight, he turns suddenly upward. It would be surprising to
see him
alight on one of the lower branches, or anywhere, indeed, except at the
topmost
point. Small
birds are all
at once scarce and silent when the shrike appears. Sometimes in his
hunger he
will attack a bird heavier than him self. I had once stopped to look at
a
flicker in a roadside apple-tree, when I suddenly noticed a
butcher-bird not
far off. At the same moment, as it seemed, the butcher-bird caught
sight of the
flicker, and made a swoop toward him. The flicker, somewhat to my
surprise,
showed no sign of panic, or even of fear. He simply moved aside, as
much as to
say, “Oh, stop that! Don’t bother me!” How the affair would have
resulted, I
cannot tell. To my regret, the shrike at that moment seemed to become
aware of
a man’s presence, and flew away, leaving the woodpecker to pursue his
exploration of the apple-tree at his leisure. The shrike
has a
very curious habit of singing, or of trying to sing, in the disjointed
manner
of a catbird. I have many times heard him thus engaged, and can bear
witness
that some of his tones are really musical. Some people have sup posed
that at
such times he is trying to decoy small birds, but to me the performance
has al
ways seemed like music, or an attempt at music, rather than strategy. Southern
readers
may be presumed to be familiar with another shrike, known as the logger
head.
As I have seen him in Florida he is a very tame, unsuspicious creature,
nesting
in the shade-trees of towns. The “French mocking-bird,” a planter told
me he
was called. Mr. Chapman has seen one fly fifty yards to catch a
grasshopper
which, to all appearance, he had sighted before quitting his perch. The
power
of flight is not the only point as to which birds have the advantage of
human
beings. |