The Bohemian waxwing, like the only other member of the family that ever visits us, the cedar-bird, is a roving gipsy. In Germany they say seven years must elapse between its visitations, which the superstitious old cronies are wont to associate with woful stories of pestilence—just such tales as are resurrected from the depths of morbid memories here when a comet reappears or the seven-year locust ascends from the ground.
The goings and comings of these birds are certainly most erratic and infrequent; nevertheless, when hunger drives them from the far north to feast upon the juniper and other winter berries of our Northern States, they come in enormous flocks, making up in quantity what they lack in regularity of visits and evenness of distribution.
Surely no bird has less right to be associated with evil than this mild waxwing. It seems the very incarnation of peace and harmony. Part of a flock that has lodged in a tree will sit almost motionless for hours and whisper in softly hissed twitterings, very much as a company of Quaker ladies, similarly dressed, might sit at yearly meeting. Exquisitely clothed in silky-gray feathers that no berry juice is ever permitted to stain, they are dainty, gentle, aristocratic-looking birds, a trifle heavy and indolent, perhaps, when walking on the ground or perching; but as they fly in compact squads just above the tree-tops their flight is exceedingly swift and graceful.
Bay-breasted Warbler
(Dendroica castanea) Wood Warbler family
Length—5.25 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English sparrow.
Male—Crown, chin, throat, upper breast, and sides dull chestnut. Forehead, sides of head, and cheeks black. Above olive-gray, streaked with black. Underneath buffy. Two white wing-bars. Outer tail quills with white patches on tips. Cream-white patch on either side of neck.
Female—Has more greenish-olive above.
Range—Eastern North America, from Hudson's Bay to Central America. Nests north of the United States. Winters in tropical limit of range.
Migrations—May. September. Rare migrant.
The chestnut breast of this capricious little visitor makes him look like a diminutive robin. In spring, when these warblers are said to take a more easterly route than the one they choose in autumn to return by to Central America, they may be so suddenly abundant that the fresh green trees and shrubbery of the garden will contain a dozen of the busy little hunters. Another season they may pass northward either by another route or leave your garden unvisited; and perhaps the people in the very next town may be counting your rare bird common, while it is simply perverse.