The diamond drill. (Crystal Falls, Iron County, Mich.) 1887-1996, 1899-12-02
A HEDGER0w MURDERER.
Great Northern 'shrike-uis
Curious Song.

While the rest of the featheIed tribes
are discussing the best air lines soath-
ward, the great northern shrike is TAX
ing cognizance of chill skies with
view, not to changing them for warmer
ones, but to making himself as COM
Portable as may be during the winter
without shifting his quarters. The
shrike, or butcher bird, as he is appro-
priately called, is one Of the birds that
stay here the year round. Consistency is
one of his few good qualities. Like
most freebooters. he is hardy fellow,
and as cold has no terrors for him he
forms pleasant feature of the winter
landscape in this region; for all that,
he is the most brutal murderer that
wears feathers.
The shrike is the quictest of birds,
keeping his plans and affairs entirely TO
himself. Except in the nesting season
he almost invariably travels alone,
wolf in sleeps clothing, who takes adj
vantage of the fact that he possesses the
innocent-looking plumage of n song
bird TO deceive his victims until his
small, sharp, crooked beak has bitten
into their brains. He never strikes like
the hawk, from the open, but you will
see him, bird slightly smaller than
robin, dark gray and black with
white markings on his wings and tail,
flying along just above the ground,
silent, uneven flight, from thicket to
thicket, bush TO bush and hedge TO
hedge. A flock of little birds, perhaps
chickadees, are busy in tree. Quiet
~ the shrike aligh.s. Easily and de-
liberately he hops from twig TO twig.
attracting no special attention. One
quick jump, Ettle flutter, and the un-
suspecting chickadees have lost one of
their friends. They never dreamed that
that quaker-colorcd plumage concealed
murderer. After few tastes of his
victim the shrike goes on and kills an
other. So bloodthirsty is he that he
used To go by the name of nine-killer,
owing TO the popular belief that he
killed and impaled on thorns nine lit
tie victims each day. OF late years it is
said that his mathematical accuracy
has deteriorated.
Greed of slaughter at times makes
him very bold and Instances are cited
where shrilIe has flown in at win
dow, grasped the bars with his claws
and struck at the canary within with
such vicious pcrtinacity that he was
finally captured by the indignant own
er of the bird. One of the butcher
birds peeuliarities is that he some
times, as though ashamed of his evil
ways, attempts TO sing. The result is
curious and not altogether unpleasing.
1t is as though the spirits OF the count
less little songbirds he had slaugh
tered were trying to sing together in
side of him and his throat were too
small TO let the sound out, resulting in
wondrous bubbling and gurgling,
while occasionally clear note of fine
music will escape from the medley of
sound IL is not often that the shrike
essays this performance, but when he
does he generally delivers his cantata
in the early morning from the topmost
twfg of tree, with breast thrown out
and head realised in as devotional an at
titude as the Pharisee that stood and
prayed.
In the spring he chooses for a nesting
place one of his favorte bushy thorn
trees and builds rather bulky nest
therein, wherein his mate, in order that
the race of strikers may grow and null
tiply, lays eggs 10 the goodly number
of six, yellowish white, thickly specked
and dotted with darker yellow. And in
few weeks the young pirates are
travelling about the hedges and bushy
byways becoming rapidly conversant
with the ways that are dark for which
the race of shrilIes is peculiar.-N. Y.
Sun