Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/79

Rh afraid of them, and I let him drop. We then commenced driving them away with sticks and dry cow-dung, and succeeded in driving them to some trees at a little distance. I then took the nest myself by cutting away some of the bushes; but before I could get at it the old birds came back again with greater fury. Sometimes they would come at our heads like an arrow,—so quick that we could scarcely see them, almost touching our heads,—and at the same time uttering a loud shriek and making a whirring noise with their wings. They continued to fly round us until we got quite out of the field by the Gas-house wall. I also shot a Grey Shrike at Milford,—I think it was about the beginning of September, 1848,—as it was perched on an ash tree on a high bank on the right-hand side of a lane leading from Milford Bridge to Clarendon. There were two of the birds in the same tree; when I shot one, the other flew down like a stone into the thick hedge; but before I could reload the gun it made off into a thick wood on the other side of the field towards Laverstock. I took the bird home, and it was there for a day or two; I then threw it away, as I did not know anyone in Salisbury who stuffed birds at that time. As near as I can remember it, the bird was about nine or ten inches long from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail; bill black, thick and strong, about an inch long; back of a pale ash-colour; wings and tail black, varied or tipped with white; throat, breast and belly of a dirty white; legs and feet black; also a black mark running from the corner of the mouth, or base of the bill, across the eye to the neck, on each side of the head. I am certain that this was the same kind of bird that I took the nest of in Gas Lane." Wishing to obtain some further information concerning this occurrence, I wrote to Mr. King again, asking him various questions on certain points, as to date, and his means of knowing the kind of bird and nest at the time of his taking it. He replied that he took the nest in 1839, when he was a boy of fourteen, and he remembered the date accurately by his going to France for some time in the ensuing year. Not having seen a nest like it before, he took it to an old man named Kite, a shoemaker, who was a bird-fancier and birdcatcher, and he told him it was the nest of the Great Grey Butcher-bird — a very rare bird in England. The eggs he gave to his cousin, and they were, alas! strung on a string with many others, as was the custom with boys in those days. During the five years King was in France he saw several of the same species, and on one occasion pointed them out to a person named W. Stone, who said he had been an under-keeper near Marlborough, and had shot a pair of the same birds there, and that the young gentlemen (from the College presumably) had told him they were Great Grey Shrikes. Mr. King, in reply to my enquiry, added that he knew the Red-backed Butcher-bird well, and that he had shot specimens of that kind as well, and said that he "should surely know the birds one from another, as there is so much difference in colour." He further mentioned that