Habitation.—When wild it is a bird of passage, arriving at the end of April, and departing about the middle of September[17]. It inhabits mountains, forests, and wooded plains, but prefers enclosed pastures where horses are kept day and night.
In confinement it requires the same treatment as the preceding.
Food.—In its wild state it prefers beetles, the dung of cows and horses, maybugs, grasshoppers, breeze-flies, and other insects; it often also darts upon lizards and young quails.
In a state of confinement it is fed like the preceding; but being more delicate it is better to rear it from the nest, feeding it on raw meat. If an old bird be taken, it is impossible to preserve it unless it be constantly fed on live insects.
Breeding.—The woodchat commonly builds its nest on the thick and bushy branches of large trees, and makes it of small sticks, moss, hogs' bristles, wool and fur. The female breeds twice, laying each time six reddish-white eggs, marked particularly at the large end with distinct red spots, mixed with pale ones of a bluish grey. The young ones are hatched in fifteen days; their colour, before the first moulting, is on the upper part, dirty white, spotted with grey; the under part is also dirty white, clouded with pale grey; the wing coverts are bordered with rust colour; the quill feathers and tail are black.
Mode of Taking.—A cruel method, but the surest, is to place bird-lime on its nest, this being the most wary species of shrike; but as it bathes freely it may be taken about the middle of the day at its washing place, if near hedges. It is often found drowned in large ponds.
Attractive Qualities.—Although this species appears endowed with as good a memory as the preceding, its notes are less agreeable, not being so soft, and it introduces some stanzas of its own shrill and harsh warbling into the songs that it imitates, which are those of the nightingale, linnet, redstart, and goldfinch. But this bird is most admired for its beautiful plumage.
THE FLUSHER.
