Chefoo, June 28.
There are those birds again! What is it all about? I though the shrikes werd pleasant little birds and not the rogues that they are supposed to be. Yet here they are, day after day, waging a relentless and unprovoked war on poor innocent magpies, who are showing a highly commendable meekness in their reception of these attentions.
It must not be thought that I hold any brief for the magpies. I dislike them heartily and should like to see and hear less of them altogether. But in all fairness one must see both sides, and apart from the hideous. piercing of his cry the Chinese magple is a fairly exemplary bird. I am not aware that he filches rings or other little trinkets from the homes of mankind, as his European and American cousins are supposed to do.
The worst theft he can be accused of, so far as my knowledge goes, is the bent iron stay of a cycle mudguard, equally useless to man or bird, but discovered as the sole object with any connection with human beings, when a nest was explored By someone with a taste for such adventures a year or two ago. And even that might not have been the work of the magpies but of the later tenants, a pair of red-legged falcons who were engaged at the tire in a furious suit inst the magpies.
As to the shrikes I rather like them. They are ornamental, not too destructive, and moderate in their chatter—compared with the magpies. And I have always cherished a feeling that these small shrikes were maligned on the strength of the misdeeds of their larger relatives. But this month they have come out of their way to show themselves as little bullies. For a long time anyone with ears to hear has noticed that magpies and shrikes in conjunction mean noise and disputation, and most of us assumed that the larger birds were the aggtessors and that the little -visitors were putting up a justifiable defence of home and property, Nothing of the kind, Day after day for nearly a fortnight the same performance has been staged right under our windows.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.