Butcherbird

“ It teaches them that our butcherbirds “bait thorns with grasshoppers to decoy the lesser insectivorous birds into situations where they may easily be seized”—a beautiful sample of teleological assumption of motive based on the fact that the shrike sometimes impales dead grasshoppers, mice and so forth on thorns or fence-splinters, having learned apparently that that is a good way to hold its prey (its feet are weak, and unprovided with talons) while it tears away mouthfuls of flesh. Often the victim is left there, only partly eaten, or perhaps untorn ”

“ For a while you will regard the Butcher Bird as a good-natured, good-looking fellow; it is not till you find, near its post of observation, mice or birds jammed into the crotches of twigs, or discover a thornbush decorated with grasshoppers and caterpillars, that you recall certain unpleasant reports about its character. When you finally see it dash into a flock of sparrows and hear their screech of terror, or see it tear out its victim's brains with that hooked bill, you will understand its hawk-like habit of sitting where it can survey its whole domain. ”

“ He rarely gets beyond a few rather insipid notes, before he sees a grasshopper or some other defenseless creature which he needs in his collection, and which he proceeds to capture and impale on the thorn of a sprout in his favorite orange tree. The butcher bird does now and then capture a small bird and add it to this collection, but I am convinced that he is not so bad a sinner, after all. Most of his prey is insects. Looking at my own butterfly collection I have almost a fellow feeling for him. ”

“ The most probable explanation of the singular and apparently cruel habit of the butcher-bird is, that it merely places its victims upon the thorns, in order to keep them safe from ground-ants, rats, mice, raccoons, foxes, and other preying creatures—just as a good cook would hang up her meat or game in the larder to prevent the cats from carrying it off. The thorny tree thus becomes the storehouse of the shrike, where he hangs up his superfluous spoil for future use, just as the crows, magpies, and jays, make their secret deposits in chinks of walls and the hollows of trees. ”

“ Indeed, the red-backed bird is the only true-born Briton of the entire family; he alone nests and rears his young here regularly. Butcher-birds, the gamekeepers call them, and well they deserve the title; for they catch and spit alive on the thorns of their larder all the bumble-bees and beetles, all the field-mice and robins they can swoop down upon and surprise from their bosky ambush. Cruel and ruthless birds, they seize whatever they can hold; but, instead of killing and eating their prey at once, they keep it deliberately alive as long as possible, on the stout thorn of a sloe-tree. ”

“ A kingbird, or other flycatcher which chooses similar perches, would sail off suddenly into the air if a winged insect hove in sight, snap it up, make an aerial loop in its flight and return to its old place. Not so the solitary, sanguinary shrike. When his wonderfully keen eyes detect a grasshopper, a cricket, a big beetle, a lizard, a little mouse, or a sparrow at a distance in a field, he drops like an eagle upon the victim, seizes it with his strong beak, and flies with steady flapping strokes of the wings, close along the ground, straight to the nearest honey locust or spiny thorn ”

“ A neighbor of mine has an arching trellis of cherokee roses over the walk from his back door to his packing house, and in the thorns of this a butcher bird has a nest, though the place is a thoroughfare and the nest almost within reach of one’s hand. The bird has a slender little attempt at a song at this time of year which I do not find altogether unmusical. Some naturalist or other has claimed that the Southern butcher bird squeaks like the weather-vane on which he likes to sit. I would be glad if all weather-vanes which squeak did it as musically as this loggerhead shrike in nesting time. ”

“ Great numbers are constantly seen. They are about the size of our robin. One species is called “the butcher bird,” and most appropriately, since it pounces upon and slaughters its prey with tyrannical cruelty. It is said to be of service to the planter in destroying grubs and insects, upon which it seizes in the manner of a hawk. It first strikes its prey with its bill (like a dun) and then grasps it in its claws so instantaneously afterward, that the most acute observation alone can enable one to decide on the priority of the action. ”

“ On a broad flat stone that serves for a bridge over the meadow ditch near by are strewn some broken snail shells and a half-eaten cockchafer. But that was not his doing. If you look closely at the bush below his perch, the bush that shelters his well-hidden nest, you may discover the butcher-bird's "larder;" may see spitted on the long thorns that help to guard his dwelling, beetles, or bees, or even a young bird, or, it may be, a dragon-fly, who surely must have been taken unaware, since with those strong gauzy wings it is said he can distance even the swallow in his swift career. ”

“ A great brown butcher bird lived in a thorn bush not far away. This horrid creature lived on mice and little birds, and like the witch of the fairy tale, hung his victims on the thorns till he was ready to eat them.
One day the children thought the canaries would like to be out of doors, and hung the cage in a pine tree. An hour later that butcher bird had reached in through the bars of the cage and bitten the heads off the whole canary family save one little one. He had been in the nest out of reach. ”

“ He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn) , and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. ”

“ GREAT GREY SHRIKE, OR BUTCHER BIRD, WITH ITS VICTIMS—SHREWS AND BLUE TITMOUSE.
Let us go on the moors again, and watch the coots and water-hens in the reedy pools near the aqueduct. Do you see that great tit on a branch of this poplar? He is actually at work doing a bit of butchery on a small warbler. See how he is beating the poor little fellow on the head; he wants to get at his brains. "Are there not birds called butcher-birds?" asked Willy, "that fix their victims on thorns, and then peck off their flesh? ”

“ Even the adult butterflies of this species have to be on the lookout for enemies. During the long months of their life many of them probably succumb to the attacks of birds or other creatures. I have seen but one such tragedy. While riding along a country highway with a bird-loving friend one spring day we saw a male Maryland yellow-throat flit by with a Mourning-cloak in his mouth. The bird lit on a fence, from which I startled him so that he dropped the butterfly, a worn and faded, half-dead specimen. The places where the bird held the insect were indicated by missing pieces of the wings. ”

“ Indeed, one of our most splendid butterflies is the Anosia plexippus, otherwise known as the milkweed butterfly, rightly named also the monarch. Every boy who knows the country in summer knows him by his rich, red coloration, his strong, black-bordered wings with their black veins. Every bird knows him too and lets him alone. On the first median nervule of the hind wings of the butterfly is a scent bag whence he dispenses an odor so disagreeable to the bird who would eat him that he goes free, and is not afterward troubled. ”

“ The butcher-bird, or shrike, is the Lanius excubitor of Linnæus, an exceeding rare bird in the West Highlands—in Scotland, indeed—so rare that we never saw a living bird of the order, only stuffed or otherwise preserved cabinet specimens. It preys on small birds, mice, insects, &c., which it does not tear up from under its feet like the hawk tribe, but fixes it on a thorn-prickle, or in the fork of a small branch, and then tears it to pieces with its bill, which is very strong, and [312] toothed and hooked at the point. ”

“ The head of this species is pale grey, the back is of ruddy hue. The lower parts are white. The forehead and a broad band running through the eye are black. A bird having a broad black band through the eye is probably a shrike, and if the bird in question habitually sits on an exposed branch or other point of vantage, and from thence swoops on to the ground to secure some insect, the probability of its being a butcher-bird becomes a certainty. ”

“ Other naturalists have been more fortunate, and we may take it as an established fact that even the smaller Indian species of butcher-birds sometimes impale their victims on thorns. The existence of such larders is easily accounted for. When the little butcher captures a victim so large that it has to be torn to pieces before consumption, he has to find some method of fixing it while tearing it up. He is not heavy enough to pin it to the ground with his talons, as a raptorial bird does, so must perforce utilise the fork of a tree or a large thorn. ”

“ Its reddish-orange colour, marked with yellow patches, black spots, and blue crescents, gives it a charming appearance as it sits on a flower, or even on the ground, with wings fully expanded to the sunlight. When the wings are closed up, however, the butterfly seems to disappear, as the under side of the wings is quite sombre in colour. The only bright spot on the under side is the yellowish central area of the fore wing, and when the wings are held erect over the insect's back this is not seen, but only the tips of these wings, which are of the same dull colour as the hind wings. ”

“ But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of goldfinches, red-poll linnets, tree sparrows, and possibly of the beautiful snow buntings, feeding in the Garden in midwinter. [Pg 11]
Even as things are, however, the cold season is sure to bring us a few butcher-birds. These come on business, and are now welcomed as public benefactors, though formerly our sparrow-loving municipal authorities thought it their duty to shoot them. They travel singly, as a rule, and sometimes the same bird will be here for several weeks together. ”

“ Some naturalists have expressed the opinion that [115] the shrike does not often attack small birds; and this would seem a reasonable view to take when we consider that the bird is no bigger than a skylark. But it is impossible to follow with the eye all the wanderings and the actions of all kinds that go to make the day of any wild bird; we really see only a very small part of the killing that goes on. The little feathered butcher is small in size, but his spirit is bold, and his taste for flesh not to be doubted. ”

“ The fore wings have one white-pupilled black eye spot towards their tips, and the hind wings have three such eye spots on the outer area. The male has a long oblique patch of blackish scales on the middle of the fore wings, which is, perhaps, more easily detected if the insect is held up to the light. The female is usually slightly larger than the male, the wings rather rounder, and the yellowish spots, are, as a rule, distinctly larger. The typical or southern form of this butterfly has the spots of a tawny colour, but it does not occur in Britain. ”

“ This species may be said to be the warbler of the Western Himalayas, and, as such, it has been made the subject of a separate essay.
THE LANIIDÆ OR SHRIKE FAMILY
The butcher-birds are the best-known members of this fraternity. Undoubtedly passerine in structure, shrikes are as indubitably raptores by nature. They are nothing less than pocket hawks.
Their habit is to sit on an exposed perch and pounce from thence on to some insect on the ground. The larger species attack small birds.
Four species of butcher-bird may perhaps be classed among the common birds of the Himalayas ”

“ With intervals of scarcely more than a few seconds, they bound out from a perch, seize an insect on the wing, and wheel back again. For hours this half work, half frolic is kept up. By the way, almost all birds sometimes engage in this flycatcher game of taking their prey on the wing. The Baltimore orioles, the bluebirds, the yellow-bellied woodpeckers, the crested tits, the chippies, the indigo-birds, and even the white-breasted nuthatches and English sparrows, to say nothing of many species of warblers, catch insects in this way. ”

“ Reuben Davis’ Butcher Bird (1936) , another story of Negro sharecroppers, likewise centers attention upon a woman, “a butcher bird ... one of these here womens that gobbles up all the mens she can, then sticks the rest of them around on thorn trees and barb wire till she gets hongry again.” This wanton brings trouble to the hard-working hero until his quiet dependability makes a new woman of her and she sacrifices her life for his. Written out of considerable knowledge of folk-life, Butcher Bird excels local color like Earth Born by its sympathetic characterization. ”

“ They can flutter lazily about, with no attempt at concealment, preserved by their own poison. In making the injurious butterfly resplendent, nature saves both the butterfly and the bird which might have gulped it down.{277}
Others are preserved by having adopted bark-designs or leaf-color or twig-shapes. Some even float about mimicking each other, if advantageous to do so. Some gain protection by imitating the brilliantly colored but uneatable butterflies for which they are mistaken. Mimicry or warning, each protects as is most beneficial, by concealing or making conspicuous. ”