Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study in the University of Utah Butcher Bird Tragedies The Shrike of by Harry Notes on Other From Various THE DRAMA OF Grant Allen relates that a few years ago an artist devised a cover for a popular scientific the center a fly flits airily over the surface of a searching for its mate in the full joy of a small fish jumps at the and seems in the very ac of angler on the fishing for the pike with a live bait of and an enthusiastic ornithologist pointing his fowling piece at the rare species of hawk in order to complete the whole cycle of slaughter this ceaseless of kind against each actor in this drama of death as careless of the life he sacrifices as the angler is to the feelings of the Part of the Butcher Bird's Larder A Bumble Two Large and a Nestling Sparrow The Female Butcher Bird on Her in the Hawthorn swallowing Behind and a pike with open mouth lies grimly in wait the small but he is anticipated by a which snatches it from his jaws before they can close over In the background a hawk poises itself on open ready to swoop down in triumph at last upon the successful There you have the epic of animal life in you have only to throw in an minnow he impales on his barbed is one with A harm no preacher can The Mayfly is torn by the The swallow is speared by the And the whole little wood where I sit Is a field of plunder and Haunts of the These lines from Tennyson's came into my mind a year ago last while watching in a ravine near a thrilling tragedy of the It was near to the end of I had followed several Louisiana tanagers and some mountain far up the stream of a wooded in order to observe more of their and if possible to discover whether or not they were already building their At one point my attention was strongly arrested by a large number of mountain several of which I found had nests in the holes of white quaking-asp in two instances not more than four or five feet from the The began while I was intently observing the chickadees as they flew about and flashed in and out of their knot-hole either building in the down or fur with which they line their nests or else carrying food for the little It was probably the former Occasionally they sang a delightful little song of about four as Bailey observes phae-de-de or sometimes the first and sometimes the middle note being the The grayish white bodies with the black caps and white with gray and brown backs and shone everywhere through the for they were there in unusual Sometimes clinging upside down to the branches of they darted about and chirped so merrily that the grove sparkled and rang from their pleasant A Tragedy of- the I was cautiously making ray way toward one of the low nests to surprise the female there if I so as to hear the hiss which she is said fo emit when an intruder comes upon her when a flutter in a bush almost in front of me attracted all A chickadee was seen to dart hither and closely followed by a large dark which I recognized as the no doubt the one that breeds in the Rocky Mountain In and from tree to up and and once clear across the open sped the chickadee in a flight so swift that its form could scarcely be followed by the The Cruel But the flight of the shrike was easy to his slaty and ominous-looking body loomed out against the and was never quite lost in the bushes as with steady speed he came nearer and nearer to his elusive I could see the cruel-looking bill as he flew and the sinister look about the and fancied I could see the terrified flutter of the heart of the little chickadee as the giant came closer and The distance between the two narrowed as they sped again across the w opening in the and with last despairing the chickadee soared rapidly It was the shrike suddenly shot upward like an arrow from the seized the tiny tid-bit in his then steered straight for an open The grove seemed quiet as death Had the other birds ceased to sing during the progress of this or had I become oblivious to their notes while watching Certain it is that if they sang then I failed-to hear Presently I saw the shrike perched again on the limb of a solitary where I had seen him just before he started for the hapless I could not discover the place to which the shrike though I tried to find the The Victims No doubt most of our readers that the or butcher impales his victims on the thorns' of such as the to which he seems to be or on some other before he devours This act of cruelty seems to add a new horror to the daily and hourly tragedy of the butcher bird's Yet I am persuaded that the shrike does not do this extraordinary thing from a mere desire to torture his half-dead nor from original as some but because of the original scarcity of The Way of the Grant Allen says the shrike's ordinary method of capturing prey closely resembles of the to he is not really well conducted butcher he a settled perch on which he sits to watch and and to which he returns after each short Flies and bees he catches on the darting upon them suddenly with a sweep like a but he also takes them especially when they are settled upon a leaf or a or are eating He will sit on a wire or a sharp look-out from his beady brown If a bee on a if a grasshopper if a mouse moves in the or a attempts to fly betide the fair the butcher bird is upon and in ten seconds more his writhing body adds to the store in the shrike's The Great Another the Great comes to us in the fall and stays through the It feeds largely on horned larks on the and on English sparrows near the It is from to inches the side of the wings and much marked with white and the wings and tail mostly The shrike is a little Observations by The species that nests in Utah is clearly described in the following notes from our Harry whose records of personal observations of this western bird will remove much of the obscurity surrounding The The commonly known as the in and raises two broods in a This bird resembles very closely the Eastern form excepting as the name the Western has a large white patch on the A Sweet Our Utah butcher bird is a sweet the song resembles that of the but is much it is a gurgling well drawn Early in the the breeding the male bird sings in close proximity to the he does this in order to decoy small upon which he often makes a although grasshoppers seem to be his favorite The Nest and Early last April I located a nest of this shrike about two miles west of Salt Lake it was built in an isolated thorn bush and contained six pearly white spotted with various shades of brown and lilac and averaging in size by of an The a loose and bulky was about the size of a only it was built of and and lined with wool and On a second visit two five young birds occupied the and the ground under the nest was bestrewed with legs and wings of the bits of heads aind feet of the common field and feathers of the English sparrow all of which proved that this pair of butcher birds had been doing good A few grasshoppers were impaled on the thorns of the bush in which the nest was Size and The call notes of this shrike are harsh and discordant He is about nine inches in with gray upper black and white black tail with the outer feathers a prominent black blotch on the sides of the under parts grayish The beak is hooked after the manner of the hawks and This shrike flies close to the ground in a straight and makes a short upward curve just before alighting on a tree or How can it be proven that a horse has six because he has fore legs in front and two When is a man in a frame of gilt When he is looking out of a prison |