Sharon L. Moore
CEDAR WAXWING
Bombycilla cedrorum
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Bombycillidae
While we’ve been enjoying various migratory songbirds in our woods and gardens during spring, one particular passerine species appears later, often in June and July. A major fruit eater, the Cedar Waxwing delays its arrival to mate, nest and raise its young when summer fruits and insects are plentiful. Traveling in large flocks of hundreds, even thousands, of birds, they disperse to forest edges, watery environs, rural farming areas, and suburban gardens in search of sugary fruits such as strawberry, serviceberry, blueberry, honey-suckle and blackberry. Once their hatchlings emerge, the parents strive to provide their chicks with adequate fruit and insect protein to give them a good chance of survival.
A high point for us is watching waxwings flit out over water showing off their amazing aeronautics as they grab flying insects. Where else will you find Cedar Waxwings feeding? Listen first for their high, thin whistles and focus your binoculars on fruit-bearing vegetation. Using that method helped us find waxwings close by, edging our country road in a grove of tall, mature, native sour cherry trees, Prunus emarginata. Since then the birds have continued to revisit those trees and a nearby dogwood, Cornus nutallii, when the fruit is ripe. Though sour cherries have large pits and these birds have small bills, they have unusually large mouths which open wide to allow them to swallow fruits whole. Pulling the fruit back into their throats is simplified with the inward-facing barb on their tongues. Other fruiting tree and shrub species that waxwings feed on include viburnum, grape, apple, hawthorn and red elderberry. In spring, while they wait for fruit, they may feed on buds, sap drips and the flowers of cherry, apple, maple, cottonwood and aspen.
Cedar Waxwings are most closely related to the silky-flycatchers of the New World. DNA studies suggest they are also close relatives to dippers, thrushes and starlings. Bird banding has revealed they may live as long as seven years. They are a gregarious, nomadic, non-territorial species. These beautiful 6 to 7 inch-long woodland songbirds have small legs and feet as well as small bills. Their sleek, silky, tawny and yellow plumage accentuates their plump bodies. Their pointed wings are darker brown and display brilliant red wax droplets on the wing feathers. The medium-length, darker brown, square tails generally have yellow tips at the terminus. They may also display red to orange tail tips depending on the color of the carotenoids in whatever food they’re eating. The waxwings also exhibit unusually erect posture accentuating their tawny head crest. A black mask stretches around their eyes and face and over their throat.
During courtship these seasonally monogamous birds often perch close together, touching bills and passing food back and forth. Once they’ve bonded, they choose a nest site in a tree usually 6 to 20 feet high though it may be lower or significantly higher – up to 50 feet. Generally both sexes build a rather loose nest on a horizontal limb or fork using twigs and roots. For a soft nest lining they add grass, moss, feathers and hair. The female lays three to five pale gray, spotted brown and black eggs. Both parents incubate the eggs for 12 to 13 days after hatching and both feed the surviving young that fledge from the nest in 14 to 18 days.
In terms of the survival capability of the Cedar Waxwing species, bird counts between 1966 and 2019 demonstrated that the population is stable. The global breeding population was estimated in 2019 at 64 million birds. In some locations their number has even increased, possibly the result of more forest and scrubland preservation as well as the use of more berry producing ornamental trees in human landscape design. That said, danger to these lovely, lively birds occurs in many forms. Countless waxwings die from window collisions as well as car strikes when the birds are feeding in fruiting trees and shrubs along roadsides. They may also die from intoxication if eating fermented fruit. And most foreboding is the danger to the waxwings from increased global warming as wildfires repeatedly incinerate their habitats. More specifically, spring and summer heat waves will endanger the young waxwings in the nest. Clearly, the long-term survival of the waxwing and all avian species on the planet depends on our working together in whatever way possible to protect birds. We can do this by succeeding at sequestering carbon, thereby stabilizing the global temperature and saving all species from extinction.
Photo credit: Cedar waxwing with a berry in Green-Wood Cemetery, by Rhododendrites, Wikimedia Commons.
