Friday’s Feathered Friends- Cedar Waxing

Posted in Birding in Nevada, Friday's Feathered FriendsTagged , , , , , , , , ,

Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.

Last week while birding I saw so many Cedar Waxwings at 2 places I visited. There were about 120 in all! At one of the places they were gorging on ripe, plump red berries.

I was doing my happy dance to see that!

“I think this one looks yummy”
Gulp!

It was a great birdy day.

Fun Facts:

  • The name “waxwing” comes from the waxy red secretions found on the tips of the secondaries of some birds. The exact function of these tips is not known, but they may help attract mates.
  • Cedar Waxwings with orange instead of yellow tail tips began appearing in the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada in the 1960s. The orange color is the result of a red pigment picked up from the berries of an introduced species of honeysuckle. If a waxwing eats enough of the berries while it is growing a tail feather, the tip of the feather will be orange.
  • The Cedar Waxwing is one of the few North American birds that specializes in eating fruit. It can survive on fruit alone for several months. Brown-headed Cowbirds that are raised in Cedar Waxwing nests typically don’t survive, in part because the cowbird chicks can’t develop on such a high-fruit diet.
  • Many birds that eat a lot of fruit separate out the seeds and regurgitate them, but the Cedar Waxwing lets them pass right through. Scientists have used this trait to estimate how fast waxwings can digest fruits.
  • Because they eat so much fruit, Cedar Waxwings occasionally become intoxicated or even die when they run across overripe berries that have started to ferment and produce alcohol.
  • Building a nest takes a female Cedar Waxwing 5 to 6 days and may require more than 2,500 individual trips to the nest. They occasionally save time by taking nest materials from other birds’ nests, including nests of Eastern Kingbirds, Yellow-throated Vireos, orioles, robins, and Yellow Warblers.
  • The oldest recorded Cedar Waxwing was a male and at least 7 years, 1 month old when he was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Maryland in 2014. He was originally banded in the same state in 2008.

Fun facts gleaned from https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cedar_Waxwing

It’s snowing as I type this but, supposed to be sunny but cold on Saturday. I hope to go out birding for a bit if that forecast holds. I hope you all have a grand week-end!

more to come…

41 thoughts on “Friday’s Feathered Friends- Cedar Waxing”

  3. “The Cedar Waxwing is one of the few North American birds that specializes in eating fruit.”

    I didn’t know this and I find it fascinating. I thought all birds ate worms or bugs. I like your photo of the little guy as he gulps the berry. Great shot.

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  6. Nice. What fun to see these beautiful birds. We have occasional flocks of them around here as well. They feed on the fruits in ornamental trees such as crabapples. Around here, every so often, if you look at individual birds in the flock of Cedar Waxwings a Bohemian Waxwing can be found.

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  11. Awesome captures and information. I remember the flock in my area doing its annual visit to my backyard and shooting them with my “ProCap” function in my camera so you catch images in a buffer but it doesn’t record to your SD card until you fully depress your shutter release button and captured some unanticipated images; the one I got was the cedar waxwing with a berry dropping into its mouth in flight. I’ll have to look at my Flickr page to see if I have that shot.
    Hope they stay around for more observations and shots!

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  14. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these beautiful birds. I love the way their color seems to fade from one to the other. The second photo, where he’s eating the berry is amazing. Great shot.

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        1. Have you got an ebird.org account? I’m not sure you need one to search, but it’s free to sign up. Anyway if you go on the site and look for Explore>HotSpots. That should get you a map of the world then zoom into Hartford, CT and man oh man are there birding places! Just a quick look right now and they have been seen at a park called Spring Park with a note all year round, but that particular sighting was from last summer. Anyway you can get lost looking at the hotspots and looking at checklists to see what birds are being seen in your town.

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      1. Right outside the window where I’m sitting at my computer now is a yaupon, and in some years I’ve managed to get cedar waxwing pictures through that window. Unfortunately last February’s ice storm damaged the tree, so there’s less fruit.

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        1. That’s awesome! When we had to replace a dead tree in our yard we wanted something with color. We put in a type of Maple that get red in Summer. I wasn’t thinking about berries! Doh! If I ever have to plant another tree in my yard it’ll be one with red berries that birds love.

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  16. These are one of my favorite birds, but I’ve seen them only three times. One year, they ate their way through all the fruits on the palm trees around my place; it was such fun listening to them ‘talk’ to one another — when they weren’t busy eating, of course! It was interesting to see that group with both yellow and orange tail tips, although it took me a while to figure out the color difference.

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