Dr. Bachman also claims that the male evinces marked evidences of attachment to his mate, carrying to her, every now and then, a grasshopper or a cricket, and driving away hawk or crow as they approach the nest.
He also states that he has usually found the nest on the outer limbs of trees, often from fifteen to thirty feet from the ground, and only once on a bush so low as ten feet from the ground. He has occasionally seen these birds feeding on mice, and also on birds that had been apparently wounded by the sportsman. It will sometimes catch young birds and devour them, but its food consists chiefly of grasshoppers, crickets, coleopterous and other insects, including butterflies and moths, which it will pursue and capture on the wing. Dr. Bachman has observed its habit of pinning insects on thorns. In one instance he saw it occupy itself for hours in sticking up, in this way, small fishes thrown on the shore, but he has never known them to devour anything thus impaled.
This Shrike is partially migratory in South Carolina, as a few may be found all winter, but only one tenth of those seen in summer. It is also
very fond of the little changeable green lizard, which it pursues with great skill and activity, but not always with success.
It is said also to breed twice in a season. Dr. Bachman describes their eggs as white, and Mr. Audubon speaks of them as greenish-white. Neither make any reference to their spots.
All the nests that I have ever seen of this species, in the simplicity of their structure and in their lack of elaboration, are in remarkable contrast with the nests of both the borealis and the excubitoroides. They are flat, shallow structures, with a height of about two inches and a diameter of five. They are made externally of long soft strips of the inner bark of the basswood, strengthened on the sides with a few dry twigs, stems, and roots. Within, it is lined with fine grasses and stems of herbaceous plants.
The eggs, often six in number, are in length from 1.02 to 1.08 inches, and from .72 to .78 of an inch in breadth; their ground-color is a yellowish or clayey-white, blotched and marbled with dashes, more or less confluent, of obscure purple, light brown, and a purplish-gray. The spots are usually larger and more scattered than in the eggs of C. borealis, and the ground-color is a yellowish and not a bluish white, as in the eggs of C. excubitoroides.
Collurio ludovicianus, var. robustus, Baird.
WHITE-WINGED SHRIKE.
?? Lanius elegans, Sw. F. B. A. II, 1831, 122.—Nuttall, Man. I, 1840, 287.—Cassin, Pr. A. N. Sc. 1857, 213.—Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 327. Collyrio elegans, Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 328. Collurio elegans, Baird, Rev. Am. B. 1864, 444.—Cooper, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 140. (According to Dresser & Sharpe, P. Z. S. 1870, 595, who have examined the type, the L. elegans of Swainson is the same as L. lahtora, Sykes, of Siberia.)