THE CEDAR WAXWING OR CEDAR-BIRD
Called Locally the “Cherry Bird”
Waxwing Family or Bombycillidæ
Length: A little over 7 inches.
General Appearance: A grayish-brown bird, with a decided crest and a yellow band at end of tail. Plump and well-fed in appearance.
Male and Female: A beautiful, rich grayish-brown with a soft yellow breast. Head conspicuously crested; forehead glossy black; a black line above the bill is extended toward the top of the head, outlining the crest; crest elevated and lowered to express surprise, contentment, fear and other emotions; bill and chin black; throat blackish. Wings brown, becoming a soft gray; wing-feathers with small red tips that look like bits of sealing-wax—hence the name, Waxwing. Tail light gray, shading to a dark grey, rounded, fan-shaped in flight, and edged with a broad yellow band.
Young: Grayish-brown, streaked, and without red tips to their wings.
Note: A gentle lisping tseep, tseep, monotonous and uninteresting. Mr. Forbush says of the waxwing, “It moves about in silence, save as it utters a lisping ‘beading’ note or a ‘hushed whistle.’”
Habitat: During the nesting season, devoted pairs may be seen in orchards, in red cedars, or in shrubbery by roadsides, preferably near trees or bushes laden with berries. The birds are rovers, usually flying in large flocks.
Range: North America. Breeds from south-central Canada to southern Oregon, northern New Mexico, Kansas, northern Arkansas, and North Carolina; winters irregularly throughout nearly all the United States, and south to Cuba, Mexico, and Panama.
Cedar Waxwings are among our most exquisite birds in their delicate blending of color and in their dainty refinement. They seem to have been tinted by a water-color artist, or an expert in the use of pastels. Their proverbial good manners seem to preclude any disturbance of their well-preened feathers by undue haste of movement or quarrelsome ruffling.
My earliest recollections of these beautiful but rather uninteresting birds is of their frequent raids upon a great mulberry tree in my grandparents’ garden. They gorged upon the dead-ripe mulberries with the quiet enjoyment of epicures rather than the greedy haste of gourmands. I remember, also, my grandmother’s dismay at the inroads which the “cherry-birds” and robins made upon her cherry crop, and my bird-loving grandfather’s command that no bird should be molested.
Cedar, juniper, sumac, and mountain ash berries, form the winter diet of these frugivorous birds. As a larder is speedily exhausted by a flock of from twenty to sixty hungry fruit-eaters, they must fly to “pastures new.” During the spring and summer seasons, they supplement their diet of wild fruit, most of which is of no commercial value, with beetles that infest potato-patches and elm trees, and cankerworms that prey upon apple trees. They are very valuable to man, and earn their dessert of cultivated cherries. Mr. Forbush says that they deserve the name of “cankerworm birds.”
He writes as follows: “They frequent infested orchards in large flocks, and fill themselves with the worms until they can eat no more. Such little gluttons rarely can be found among birds. The Cedar-bird seems to have the most rapid digestion of any bird with which experiments have been made. Audubon said that Cedar-birds would gorge themselves with fruit until they could be taken by hand; and that he had seen wounded birds, confined in a cage, eat of apples until suffocated. They will stuff themselves to the very throat. So, wherever they feed, their appetites produce a visible effect. Professor Forbes estimates that thirty Cedar-birds will destroy ninety thousand cankerworms in a month. This calculation seems to be far within bounds.
“Cedar-birds are devoted to each other and to their young. Sometimes a row of six or eight may be seen, sitting close together on a limb, passing and repassing from beak to beak a fat caterpillar or juicy cherry. I have seen this touching courtesy but once, and believe it was done not so much from politeness as from the fact that most of the birds were so full that they had no room for more—a condition in which they could afford to be generous. Nevertheless, the manner in which it was done, and the simulation of tender regard and consideration for each other exhibited, rendered it a sight well worth seeing. They also have a habit of ‘billing’ or saluting one another with the bill.”[27]
A flock of cedar-birds “seep” and whisper to each other like over-fed children. Their note seems to be an expression of their gentle, affectionate, comfortable, ease-loving natures. There appears to be absence of aspiration or longing in their bird-hearts, which seems so poignant in thrushes and many other songsters.
THE BOHEMIAN WAXWING
The Bohemian Waxwing is very similar to its cousin, the Cedar Waxwing, in color and markings, but may be distinguished by its larger size, (8 inches), by reddish-brown feathers under the tail, by the absence of yellow on the breast, by a crown that is reddish-brown in front, and by yellow and white markings on the wings. In note, feeding habits, and other characteristics, it resembles the Cedar-bird.