Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — The Shrike or Butcher Bird. [ARTICLE]

The Shrike or Butcher Bird.

The shrike bird is very common in Florida and generally known by the name of butcher bird. It is a most cruel and vindictive bird, and it seems to have the same traits North or South. Most varieties of orange trees, especially seeding trees, are covered with thorns, often three or four inches long. It is oommon to find beetles, grasshoppers, katydids, and the harmless chameleon impaled on these thorns, and one often surprises the bird in his cruelties. I was once taking dinner with a friend in town; the windows were open and in one end of the room was a canary bird in its cage. Suddenly a butcher bird darted in a window, and flew around the bird cage. The poor little canary seemed fascinated and drawn to the side of the cage, when the cannibal thrust its head in between the wires and, with a most dexterous twist, took off the head of the capary and,- dropping it on the dining table near my plate, flew out of the window. So quickly was it done that, though seven persons sat at the table, none of us realized the catastrophe until the helpless little head fe’l on the table. Only a conple of weeks ago I came across two 'boys on the road who had killed a black snake some five or six feet long, which they were stretching across the road. While standing looking at the snake, and within a few feet of it. a butcher bird pounced down and, almost as quick as lightning, seized and twisted off the end of the tail and flew away with some four inches of it to ornament some thorn on an orange tree. Therk is no proof of the extinction of the buffalo so convincing and saddening as the great piles of skulls, horns, and bones of these animals that are seen near the railroad tracks on the Northwestern plains. The sale of these bones by farmers and ranchmen who find them gives them a small return in ready money. Most of the bones are shipped to the East, where they are converted into bono charcoal, which is used for filtering in the sugar refineries.