Quite a character

Sitting on a wire, neatly in a row, passing a berry up and down the line until someone finally eats it. That’s how a playful flock of cedar waxwings may spend some leisure time.

Of course if they are attacking a fruit-laden mountain ash tree in winter, it’s every bird for itself. It’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow the sharp-shinned hawk may be waiting around the corner.

Some get too full to take off. Some get inebriated, if the berries are a bit too ripe, and shouldn’t take off. In fact, drunken and disorderly conduct is often the result – with hapless drunken birds flying not just into windows, but into buildings and cars as well. Smashed, sloshed and plastered birds get smashed, sloshed and plastered all over the place.

For this reason, cedar waxwings remind me of my college days. Not, I should be quick to add, that my college days were filled with my getting smashed, sloshed and plastered. The campus where I attended, you see, had lots of mountain ash trees, and every winter the biology department was inundated with drunken waxwings scooped from the snow and brought in for detox. I was amazed at the spectacle.

Yes, the cedar waxwing is quite the character species. At least, if they indulge a bit too much, these seem to be happy little drunks. I’d hate to see a hawk or eagle soused. That would be ugly.

There’s nothing ugly about waxwings, however. From their picturesque little names, to their freshly painted appearance, to their cheery little whistles, to their endearing little antics, cedar waxwings are the epitome of the good things of winter in North Idaho. Along with its bigger cousin, the bohemian waxwing, waxwing flocks are always on a winter birder’s Christmas wish list.

The cedar waxwing is the smallest in the waxwing group, which is itself a small group – only three species in the world. Cedars are strictly a North American species, while bohemians are strictly Northern Hemisphere, but are circumpolar – holarctic in ecological terms – OK, it’s found in North America, Europe and Asia.

The third member of the group is the Japanese waxwing, which is intermediate in size, but is said to be the most beautiful of the three. While cedars and bohemians have a yellow-striped tail tip and bohemians have yellow markings in their wings, Japanese waxwings are bright red in both areas – with multiple white wing bars added in. Ours, however, will certainly do.

With their pointy little heads – I guess it’s called a crest – and fancy black masks – causing some to refer to them as “swashbuckling bandits” – both our waxwings are plenty striking. It’s their up-close markings, though, that don’t look real – too “smooth and elegant,” too “soft and filmy,” too sleek in blended fawn-browns and pewter-grays.

While their overall appearance may leave the impression of a painted figurine, it’s their unique red-tipped wing feathers that not only give the group their name, but make them, on close inspection, look faked. In the old days, the red droplets of carotenoid-pigmented and flattened feather shafts were described as waxy – thus, waxwing. Today we’d say the tips look more like plastic. It ruins the whole effect, but it’s true.

By the way, the other part of their name, cedar, comes from their taste for the fruit of eastern red cedar trees in the Southeast. I’ll have to admit the name sounds better than “mountain ash waxwing” – or, even worse, “mountain ash plasticwing.”

Bohemian waxwings are named for their lifestyle, not a point of origin. I don’t know why Japanese waxwings were so-named. They can be found in Japan at certain times of the year, but they do not nest there. They are found mostly throughout East Asia.

Why is bohemian an apt name for a member of this group? As I understand the term bohemian, it refers to someone, in this case something, usually an artistic type, who does not live according to the conventions of society – in this case, the society of passerine birds.

Take the cedar waxwing as our example. First of all, passerines are the “singing birds,” and waxwings are passerines. But waxwings do not sing. They whistle. It’s not even a real whistle, actually. It’s a “high, thin, clear ‘scree’.” It’s a “high, soft ssse.” It’s a “muted trill.” It’s a “high, thin, almost whispering monotone.” But all agree it’s not a song.

It’s a neat sound, whatever you call it. To me, it’s synonymous with snowy winter. And although cedar waxwings are found in North Idaho year-round, it’s a summer sound that’s out of place, to me.

Waxwings also are unique in their degree of gregariousness. Think – have you ever seen a waxwing by itself? I never have. Even when nesting, when most passerines, even those you’d consider gregarious other times of the year, are territorial, waxwings are not. They are, in fact, loosely colonial in their nesting habits – nesting together in clumps near fruiting shrubs and trees.

Waxwings’ flocking affinity is especially pronounced in winter. They always flock at least by the dozens, and often by the hundreds or thousands – often with both cedars and bohemians mixed together.

I was told long ago that if you look carefully enough through a cedar waxwing flock – usually the most common of the two species here in winter – you’ll always find at least one bohemian. I think it’s true.

There is, as you’d expect there to be, an important reason for the social habits of waxwings. All their needs are tied to their demand for sugary fruit as an extremely important part of their diet throughout the entire year. And fruitfulness is to be found in numbers. Lots of eyes roving over lots of area help find the scattered plots of plenty, the locally superabundant berry and fruit crops.

In winter, it’s stale berries and fruits still hanging on vines and tress. In spring, it’s newly forming buds of what will become berries and fruits and oozing sap rising to nourish the buds. In early spring, it’s also petals of flowers that, once pollinated, will become berries and fruits. Even when nesting, waxwings depend on fresh berries and fruits to feed their young.

Most passerines rely upon high-protein bugs for chick-rearing. Only some of the finches break this rule and feed seeds to their hatchlings. Waxwings will feed bugs for a relatively short few days, but then they return to their frugivorousness – fruit-feeding obsession.

So important is this dependence on fruit for feeding their young that cedar waxwings delay nesting until late into the summer, synchronized to the schedule of ripening fruit.

As I noted in my opening, cedar waxwings even use fruit to play social games. And courting pairs use fruit-passing games as well, called “hopping dances.” In the dance, the male may pass a berry, bill-to-bill, to its mate. She’ll take the gift and hop a step away, and then she’ll hop back, passing the berry back to her mate. Even if the berry isn’t passed on the inward hop, the birds touch beaks, as if kissing.

They’ll repeat this “cute” little ritual, alternately hopping to part and rejoin, until the berry is either eaten or dropped. I wonder if it’s bad form to drop the berry. It sounds like doing the waxwing “hokey-pokey” to me.

And I’m still wondering about that line of waxwings playing pass the berry. How do they decide who gets to eat it? Is there a rule? Is there such a thing as waxwing etiquette? I’d really like to know.