Old-fashioned ornithologists used to think the shrikes were related to the birds of prey; and, indeed, they do somewhat resemble the smaller hawks in external features.
In a third garden Lenz allowed Shrikes to nest freely, with the result that all the insect-eating birds forsook the place, or else were destroyed by the Butcher-birds, and there was no fruit.
I have already stated that shrikes feed upon small mammals, birds and reptiles, and large insects.
It will come down at once to a cage of small birds exposed at a window, and I once had an amadavat killed and partly eaten through the wires by one of these shrikes which I saw in the act with my own eyes.
Baby shrikes make their debut into the world during the hot weather.
Not so the shrikesand birds of prey, whose quarry has to be devoured piecemeal, to be captured, killed, then torn to pieces.
The earlier naturalists were misled by this outward likeness, and, in consequence, classed the swifts with the swallows and the shrikes with the falcons.
After I was convinced that, in some unaccountable manner, the shrikes had been spirited away before they were half big enough, I changed my place to the other side of the tree, out of sight from the nest.
Whatever other shrikes may be or do, at least this pair, and the three or four others who visited them, were amiable with their neighbors, small as well as great.
At least twice afterward, when silently approaching the nest, I found two other shrikes hopping about with the one I was studying, on the ground, almost under the tree.
I watched this attack with great interest, not knowing that shrikes were concerned in blackbird matters, and also because it was welcome news that one of these strange characters had rented a lot of me.
I could hear the merry songs of the assembly down in the sycamores, but not a bird lit while we were there--the shrikes certainly have a bad name among their neighbors.
Shrikes are savage enough for any murder, but most little birds are too sharp for them.
Who is honestly able to give the shrikes a better character than Dr.
The Shrikes proper possess the instinct of destruction in the very highest degree.
The Falcon Shrikes are sometimes called Swallow Shrikes, because they fly with as much ease as the Swallow, and, like the latter bird, pursue insects on the wing.
At our landing, the people fled from their poore cottages, with shrikes and alarms, to warne their neighbours of enemies, but by gentle perswasions we reclamed them to their houses.
Whilest he was searching the Countrey neere the shoare, some of the people of the Countrey shewed themselues leaping and dauncing, with strange shrikes and cries, which gaue no little admiration to our men.
From the valleys of the Beas and the Sutlej, as also from Kumaon and Gurhwal, these Shrikes seem to disappear entirely during the summer, and they are then, as we also know, found breeding in Yarkand.
Down in those places this Lanius was the Common Shrike, but south and west of Ummerkuntuk all the Shrikes disappear more or less, and L.
My brother on one occasion saw one of these Shrikes trying to catch a garden lizard--not a gecko.
The Shrikes, or Butcher Birds, 34-37 The shrikes form a well-marked family of birds.
This species is distinguishable from the above three shrikes by the fact that it lacks the white wing bar which makes the others so conspicuous during flight.
I have watched a family ofshrikes several times, and always looked very sharply to see if they touched birds.
The conclusion of the Agricultural Department as to the food of shrikes all over the country is that it consists mainly of grasshoppers, and that the good they do is much greater than the harm, and therefore they should be protected.
Suckley writing in the Fifties remarks the scarcity of allShrikes in Oregon or Washington "Territories," and this is fortunately still true, especially west of the Cascades.
The smaller Shrikes are birds of the open country, and they should be found in at least Lewis, Thurston, and Pierce Counties.
The Sage Shrikesare prolific and attentive breeders.
Shrikes are noted for their singular habit of impaling their prey on thorns or similarly sharp-pointed growths, or occasionally they may hang it in the crotch of a limb.
Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires; from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to the wire.
There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham Junction.
One of a group of Australian birds of the genus Falcunculus, resemblingshrikes and titmice.
The cuckoo shrikes of the East Indies and Australia are Oscines of the family Campephagidæ.
The drongo shrikes of the same regions belong to the related family Dicruridæ.
Defn: Of or pertaining to the shrikes (family Laniidæ).
East Indian and Asiatic birds of the family Artamiidæ, allied to the shrikes but similar to swallows in appearance and habits.
Most shrikes are insectivorous, but the common European gray shrike (Lanius excubitor), the great northern shrike (L.
The Bush Shrikes on the other hand, are a more ignoble race; they only prowl after young or sickly birds, and seek their principal nourishment from those insects which shelter in foliage.
In unison with that symbolical system which pervades all nature, we find a perfect representation of this group in the Bush-Shrikes of the new world.
Since that name is applied to theshrikes only, the next available generic name that may be applied to the generically different waxwings must be used.
The generic name Lanius was originally applied to both shrikes and waxwings by Linnaeus.
Cuckoo-shrikes keep to trees, and rarely, if ever, descend to the ground.
Undoubtedly passerine in structure, shrikes are as indubitably raptores by nature.
Judd of the Food of Shrikes in their relation to agriculture are published in a single bulletin by the Department of Agriculture.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "shrikes" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
