mainly a fall and winter one; in summer he goes farther north. I see
him most frequently in November and December. I recall a morning during
the former month that was singularly clear and motionless; the air was
like a great drum. Apparently every sound within the compass of the
horizon was distinctly heard. The explosions back in the cement
quarries ten miles away smote the hollow and reverberating air like
giant fists. Just as the sun first showed his fiery brow above the
horizon, a gun was discharged over the river. On the instant a shrike,
perched on the topmost spray of a maple above the house, set up a loud,
harsh call or whistle, suggestive of certain notes of the blue jay. The
note presently became a crude, broken warble. Even this scalper of the
innocents had music in his soul on such a morning. He saluted the sun
as a robin might have done. After he had finished, he flew away toward
the east.

The shrike is a citizen of the world, being found in both hemispheres.
It does not appear that the European species differs essentially from
our own. In Germany he is called the nine-killer, from the belief that
he kills and sticks upon thorns nine grasshoppers a day.

To make my portrait of the shrike more complete, I will add another
trait of his described by an acute observer who writes me from western
New York. He saw the bird on a bright midwinter morning when the
thermometer stood at zero, and by cautious approaches succeeded in
getting under the apple-tree upon which he was perched. The shrike was
uttering a loud, clear note like _clu-eet, clu-eet, clu-eet,_ and, on
finding he had a listener who was attentive and curious, varied his
performance and kept it up continuously for fifteen minutes. He seemed
to enjoy having a spectator, and never took his eye off him. The
observer approached within twenty feet of him. "As I came near," he