jackie hangman, noun phrase

Forms:
Also jackey-hangman, jacky-hangman, and with initial capitals.
Origin:
See quotation 1945.
The fiscal (sense 2), Lanius collaris.
1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 231Jacky Hangman, Natal name for the above bird (sc. Jack hanger).
c1936 M. Valbeck Headlong from Heaven 206Outside, the brilliantly plumaged sunbirds and ‘Jackie Hangmans’ sang.
1945 N. Devitt People & Places 145Jacky Hangman is..the Natal name for the butcher bird, known in the Cape as the fiskaal. Its quaint name was bestowed upon it from its habit of catching the locusts, beetles, and small birds upon which it lives, and impaling them upon long, sharp thorns.
1963 S. Cloete Rags of Glory 423On a low branch a jackie hangman..predatory as an eagle, watched for tiny insect game to eat or impale, still living, on the sharp spikes of the thornbush that was his larder.
1964 J. Cope in C. Millar 16 Stories 35A handsome black-and-white bird..a..jackey-hangman, a terrible greedy pirate of a bird.
1973 Weekend Post 28 Apr. 4The big brass scale showing how many grass-hoppers, mice and lizards are eaten by two shrikes (Jackie Hangman) which in turn feed one hawk.
1988 Laband & Haswell Pietermaritzburg 1838–1988 177The symbolic waiting and watching of the ‘Jackie Hangman’.
1989 Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)We had a budgie..but eventually a Jackie Hangman killed her.
The fiscal (sense 2), Lanius collaris.
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19131989

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jackie, nounn.jackroll, verb transitivev.
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