It is not his habit of making an occasional meal from a small bird that has given the butcher-bird his name, for many birds have the same habit. It is his peculiar custom of storing his food that has gained him the reputation of keeping a “butcher’s shop.” Most birds kill an insect as they need it and either eat it or carry it off to their nestlings. The butcher-bird thriftily makes a small collection of insects and lays them in a row. I have seen him lay a huge brown grasshopper and a slim praying mantis side by side on my garden rail, and then fly off and hang another grasshopper in a slender fork of a wattle. Gould, in his famous work, pictures the butcher-bird with a blue wren hanging from a fork in the tree beside him, a picture which naturally ruined the bird’s reputation. I am happy to say I have never seen that horrid tragedy, and from personal observation I think that insects are a much more usual part of his diet than are little birds. At any rate, with such a beautiful voice he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I hope it is not characteristic of us that in naming him we should have overlooked his rare beauty and pounced on his little weakness, though I cannot help thinking that in more aesthetic lands he would have had a name more suited to his beautiful song. [Illustration: _Our best autumn singer--the Butcher-bird_] The butcher-bird--since I must call him so--is our best autumn singer, but in the spring his place is taken by the grey thrush. He is next, I think, on the list of our songbirds, and his sweet ringing call holds all the freshness and joy of spring. He is such a darling bird to have about the place. He perches on the redgum or the wattles, which stand in line with the white cedar, and he looks down at me with his big round eye in the friendliest fashion. So graceful he is, too, and so elegant in his neat grey coat, that I always place him in my mind amongst the beautiful birds, though some might call him plain. Whilst you might dispute the grey thrush’s claim to beauty, no one can deny that of two other of my songbirds, the two thickheads, or thunderbirds, as they are sometimes called, because they burst into song after a clap of thunder or any sudden noise. The yellow-breasted one is very gorgeous, with his white throat and black face; but the rufous-breasted one is handsome, too. Sometimes he breaks into a whip-like note, which has earned him the name of “ring-coachie” amongst small boys. Once, on a rare occasion, the coachwhip bird himself sent his call up from the little creek. As every one knows, the coachwhip bird is a shy, furtive creature, rarely seen by anyone but real bird observers, though his voice is common enough in the gullies. We are nearly a mile away from the gully where he lives, and he must have crept up through the intervening gardens to have a look at the wilderness. Just once he came, but though I have looked and listened I have had no sign or sound of him since.