has a pale base and the eye appears large due to a pale ring around it. Similar species The brown shrike is larger with a longer tail and thinner bill. Adults have a brown crown and nape, plain brown back and a white stripe over the eye. Juveniles are less contrastingly marked than the juvenile tiger shrike and have a dark mask. The bull-headed shrike is also larger and longer-tailed. Adults have a reddish-brown crown and nape and males have a white wing-patch. The Burmese shrike (Lanius collurioides) is slimmer and longer-tailed than the tiger shrike with a white wing-patch and a plain chestnut back. Voice Its song is a musical warbling. It has a variety of harsh calls including a loud, repeated territorial call, a chattering alarm call and a softer trilling call. It often calls from within cover but territorial males call from a prominent perch. Distribution and habitat It breeds in temperate regions of eastern Asia in deciduous or mixed woodland, forest edges and farmland with scattered trees. It is found in lowland areas, mainly occurring below 150 metres in Russia, 800 metres in Japan and 900 metres in China. Its range covers Ussuriland in the Russian Far East north to about 44°N, central and eastern China, Korea and northern and central parts of the Japanese island of Honshū. It migrates southward in August and September, returning to the breeding grounds in May and June. It winters in tropical and subtropical regions of south-east Asia below 1,000 metres above sea-level. Its non-breeding range extends from south-east China south through eastern Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to Malaysia and Indonesia where a few reach Java and Bali in the south and Sulawesi in the east. In winter it occurs in forest clearings and edges, cultivated land, mangroves and gardens. Vagrant birds have occurred in Hong Kong and the Philippines. In Australia, a dead bird which may have arrived on a ship was once found near Fremantle and a bird was seen on Christmas Island in April 2008. It has a wide distribution and a fairly large population and is not considered threatened with BirdLife International classing it as least concern. However it has declined recently in Japan and Russia. In Japan, it is now uncommon and local but was formerly common and occurred in the suburbs of Tokyo. Behaviour Feeding It feeds mainly on insects, particularly grasshoppers, crickets,