. British birds. Birds. OTES. PARASITIC WORMS IN RED-BACKED SHRIKE. On or about May 23rd, 1916, a male Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio) was picked up dead beneath the stump of a withered tree near Chelmsford. Desiring to have it made into a skin. I sent it to Gardner's, in Holborn. After skinning, he returned tlie body to me that I might see an extraordinary collection of parasitic worms (evidently some species of Filaria) he had found beneath the skin of the neck—a thing he had never seen before. These worms, some twenty in number, were white in colour, slender, thread-like, of the same di
. British birds. Birds. OTES. PARASITIC WORMS IN RED-BACKED SHRIKE. On or about May 23rd, 1916, a male Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio) was picked up dead beneath the stump of a withered tree near Chelmsford. Desiring to have it made into a skin. I sent it to Gardner's, in Holborn. After skinning, he returned tlie body to me that I might see an extraordinary collection of parasitic worms (evidently some species of Filaria) he had found beneath the skin of the neck—a thing he had never seen before. These worms, some twenty in number, were white in colour, slender, thread-like, of the same diameter throughout, and each about three inches in length. They were '' rooted " (so to speak) in the flesh of the upper part of the neck, aromid the base of the skull. Some of them had, I believe, actually penetrated into the cranial cavity and reached the brain, passing through the basal orifice. They had been. Avithout doubt, the cause of the bird's death. I submitted the bird's neck, preserved in formalin, to Dr. A. E. Shipley, , who hacl kindly offered to examine the worms. He reports that there is little doubt they are Filaria nodulosa of Rudolph. The species may be known now, he says, by some other name ; for systematists have constantly revised the species of this genus, and it is difficult to obtain access to the latest revision Avhilst so many libraries and nuiseums are wholly or partiallj^ closed. The species in question is, however, described in Molin's monograph on Filaria and in Schneider's monograph on the Nematoda (p. 91, 1866). Both writers describe it as living beneath the skin of the neck of the Red-backed Shrike. The phenomenon is, therefore, clearly not new, though several good British ornithologists to whom I have mentioned it have known nothing of it. As to whether other species of Shrike are affected. I know not. It would be interesting to ascertain the earlier host of this curious parasitic worm : but, as to this, probably nothing is known.
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