bitwise shift operators, where does the bit go?

Projects Programming
3

Workinonit:
So I want to examine a byte of data and inspect the individual bits to see if they are on.

I know that I can do something like

for(byte i=0;i<8;i++)

{   if (data & (1<<i))
       do blah;
}




What I am however this seems like a lot of code to do such a simple thing. Where does the bit go that is shifted out of the byte? Does it go into overflow? I would think you could do soemthing like 

**Using C++ what happens on certain shift operations depends on if the variable is a signed or unsigned type (http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Bitshift) If one is programming in AVR assembly language then you do have access to a carry and/or overflow bit that is effected by certain machine language shift and rotate instructions.**
**Lefty**

for(byte i=0;i<8;i++)
{   data >>=1;
   if(overflow) {
       do blah;
   }
}




I am trying serially write to a pin and don't wish to use SPI. Speed is super important to keep the data rate as high as possible, thus, I am trying to do it with the least number of instructions. 

Any help is much appreciated...

As always...
Workinonit!