Читать книгу Jack Miner and the Birds, and Some Things I Know about Nature онлайн

37 страница из 53

A particular friend of mine was dissecting a shrike. This shrike is a bird about the size and color of a blue jay, known to a great many people as the butcher bird. I said to those standing by, “He is a bad one; always shoot him on sight.” My friend stopped for a moment and said, “Beg your pardon, Jack, but you are wrong; this is not the big northern shrike you have reference to.” “No, no, my dear fellow,” I replied; “I mean the very one you are skinning, and again I say, shoot him on sight.” My friend smiled and replied in a kind, cheerful manner, “Jack, I am surprised at you.” Now, dear reader, here were two natural born naturalists right opposite each other, one advocating the protection, the other the destruction, of the same bird. I had watched this shrike in Ohio when I was a kid. I had often found his nest and knew what he fed his young upon. I have caught dozens of them, right in the act, in Canada, and they are always searching for birds, chiefly the small fly-catchers. Well, we dissected this fellow, and found two little birds’ legs, and they were not mates. Last fall I saw a shrike follow a snow bird fully five hundred feet high, but the snow bird won out.