Shrike
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Shrike. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a family of birds comprising about two hundred, chiefly Old World species. Two are found in America. The northern shrike, or butcher-bird, clad in gray, with black wings and tail and white under parts, breeds in the far north and winters southward as far as Virginia. It is about ten inches long and has a stout, hooked, hawk-like bill. Its habit is to sit aloft on a dead branch, watching for grasshoppers, mice, and small birds. It is a special foe of the English sparrow. The shrike is noticeable for a habit of hanging its food till needed on a thorn, in the fork of a twig, or on the barb of a wire fence. The loggerhead shrike with black upper parts is an inch shorter and breeds from the Canadian line southward. Like the preceding species, it combines the habits of a hawk and a flycatcher. It nests in thorny hedges and thickets at the height of one's head or higher. Bradford Torrey offers the following observation with evident satisfaction: The bravado of the butcher-bird is great, but it is not unlimited. I saw him, one day, shuffling along a branch in a very nervous, unshrikely fashion, and was at a loss to account for his unusual demeanor till I caught sight of a low-flying hawk sweeping over the tree. Every creature, no matter how brave, has some other creature to be afraid of: otherwise, how would the world get on? Shrike or butcher-bird
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in ornithology, a popular name for any individual of the Laniidæ, three cenapplied specially for the last BULL-HEADED SHRIKE turies to Lanius excubitor, the great gray male is shrike. The length of the adult on upper about 10 inches: pearl gray part of body; chin, breast, and abdomen black, variegated, white; tail feathers ; a black band and tipped with white The lesser gray crosses the forehead. nine shrike (L. minor), from eight to winter visitor. inches, is an occasional colluris), like The red-backed shrike (L. the nine L. septentrionalis, is often called or two other small killer, and with one placed in a genus shrikes is sometimes insects and Enneoctonus. Shrikes feed on habit small birds, and have a remarkable thorns in the of impaling their prey on , which may neighborhood of their nests They kill and thus be easily discovered. they do not eat impale many insects that See BUTCHER BIRD.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 figure of "about two hundred" species reflected a much broader family: modern taxonomy strips out the cuckoo-shrikes, bush-shrikes, helmetshrikes and vangas, leaving Laniidae with roughly thirty-odd true shrikes. The bird Aiton called the northern shrike and Collier's treated as the great gray shrike, Lanius excubitor, was split in 2017 by the American Ornithological Society, with the North American population recognized as its own species, Lanius borealis. The conservation picture has reversed too: the loggerhead shrike that then "breeds from the Canadian line southward" has declined sharply across North America, with the eastern population all but gone from Ontario and sustained by captive breeding, while the red-backed shrike Collier's lists has ceased to breed regularly in Britain. The impaling habit both accounts describe is real and is now understood as food caching, larders that also serve as displays to attract mates.
Written for this edition, 2026.