uttered sufficiently often to form a sort of song; and several
observers say they imitate the voice of other birds. The
food of the Red-backed Shrike is mice and probably shrews,
small birds, and various insects, particularly the common
May-chaffer. Its inclination to attack and its power of
destroying little birds has been doubted; but it has been
seen to kill a bird as large as a Finch, is not unfrequently
caught in bird-catchers’ clap-nets, having struck at the call-
birds, and is recorded as having been seen in eager chase of
a Blackbird by Sheppard and Whitear. The same writers
mention their having found the bill of a Red-backed Shrike
coated over with cowdung, doubtless from its having been
searching therein for insects. Mr. Hewitson says, that
seeing a male of this species busy in a hedge, he found,
upon approaching it, a small hird, upon which it had been
operating, firmly fixed upon a blunt th o rn ; its head was torn
off, and the body entirely plucked.
The nest made by this species is very large in proportion
to the size of the bird, frequently measuring from six lo
seven inches diameter; it is usually placed rather high in a
strong hedge or thick bush, and is generally formed of
coarse stalks of plants on the outside, with some moss and
fibrous roots within, and lined with bents and a few hairs.
The eggs are four or five in number, measuring from ‘95
to ’82 hy from -68 to -62 in., and very variable in colour,
sometimes of a yellowish-, or occasionally pale olive-wliite,
with markings of wood-brown, olive or lilac, generally well-
defined, and often in distinct spots, but not unfrequently in
diffused blotches, while again other eggs have a salmon-
coloured ground with markings of light red of two shades
and lilac, the markings in both varieties frequently forming
a band or zone, The eggs have been exceedingly well represented
in all the editions of Mr. Hewitson’s work.
The Red-backed Shrike breeds more or less commonly in
all the counties of England and Wales, becoming scarcer to the
extreme west and north. I t lias not been observed in any
part of Ireland, and has only of late years been recorded
from Scotland, though noticed there, according to Mr. Robert
Gray, so long ago as 1817, when a pair were shot near
Hawick. Mr. Arbuthnot in 1883, seems, however, to have
been the first to publish the fact of the occurrence of this
species in the northern kingdom; since which time Mr.
Sinclair, Prof. Runs, Dr. Gordon, Lord Haddington and
Mr. Harvie Brown have recorded similar observations,
shewing that, during the season of its migration, it is an
occasional visitor to the eastern parts of Scotland, while in a
few instances it has been seen in pairs and may possibly
have bred there. Indeed there is reason to infer that it has
done so even in the Shetlands ; for Dr. Saxby, who in 1886
shot an example in Unst, early in June, 1870, observed in the
same island a female of this species accompanied by three
young birds, one of which frequented a garden there for
nearly three weeks. This Shrike occurs in summer throughout
the continent of Europe excepting the Iberian peninsula,
ranging as high as lat. 84° N., and is found in the temperate
parts of Siberia. De Filippi observed it everywhere in
Persia, and thence it may he traced across Palestine to Africa,
where, though not hitherto found to the northward of the
Great Desert or of Angola on the west coast, it is very widely
distributed, for ascending the valley of the Nile it occurs on
both sides of the southern part of that continent as far as the
confines of the Cape Colony, and, curiously enough, breeds
there.
The adult male has the beak black, the feathers of the
forehead and lore, around the eye, and those forming the
ear-coverts, black; the irides hazel-brown; all the upper
part of the head and the neck grey; hack and wing-coverts
fine chestnut-red; upper tail-coverts grey, tinged "with re d ;
primaries dusky black, edged with red on the outer web ;
secondaries and tertials the same, but with broader red
margins; tail-feathers with the proximal half white, the
distal half black, just tipped with white; the shafts black;
the two middle tail-feathers, which are longest, are wholly
black except the tips, which are white; the outer tail-feather
on each side about three-eighths of an inch shorter than the
others. The chin is nearly white ; all the under surface of