OC Birder Girl: Cedar Waxwings

Friday, January 2, 2009

The Hunt for the Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwings at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Every year during the holidays, I am not just hunting for the perfect gift, I am hunting for a bird that only comes through around this time every year: the Cedar Waxwing. To me, this masked, crested bird is part of the holiday season. Winter berries are on the Toyon and other bushes throughout wildlife areas and parks and neighborhoods. Even on trees you will find fruit that Cedar Waxwings and American Robins delight in eating. Cedar Waxwings gorge themselves on fruit. It's like watching teenage boys at a buffet. They chow down like no other bird I have seen.

Cedar Waxwing at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

I searched everywhere hoping to find them. I searched Huntington Central Park with its many bushes festooned with red berries. I would often hear from another birder that, gosh, they'd just been here near the volleyball court or here near the fence. However, when I was there, they were not.

Cedar Waxwing in an Industrial Complex in Orange County, California. Taken through the window.

One day at work, my supervisor had brought us bagels and English muffins. The toaster is near the window. I was toasting an English muffin when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a flock of Cedar Waxwings in the Liquid Amber trees outside my office window. They were resting after picking the trees and bushes clean of berries and fruit. I just happened to have my camera and clicked away since I was on a break.

Cedar Waxwing photographed from my office at work. "Through a glass darkly..." To misapply a quote.

But the camera focused on the reflection on the window, and I had problems getting clear shots.

Cedar Waxwings --notice the yellow waxy substance on the tail, and the red waxy substance on the wings--hence the name Waxwings.

So I kept snapping, hoping some would be okay.

Cedar Waxwing in Orange County business complex.

And snapping.

Cedar Waxwing in Orange County.

Then I got another chance at some clearer shots. I drove over to San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary and went into the Butterfly Garden area. There were over a hundred Cedar Waxwings fluttering and gorging themselves at several Toyon bushes. Wahoo!

Cedar Waxwing at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

After I had snapped a few pictures, my camera flashed a very unwelcome message--"Card and Internal Memory Full." I ran home cleared the card, grabbed another and went back as fast as I safely could. Alas, when I went back, the feast was over and a Cooper's Hawk sat in a nearby tree waiting for his own banquet to begin.

Feather fluffed and puffed to conserve heat in the cold afternoon, a Cooper's Hawk waits near the Toyon Bushes in the Butterfly Garden for the Cedar Waxwings to return. San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary .

Cedar Waxwing at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary--up a tree.

As I headed toward the car, I saw that there were many Cedar Waxwings silhouetted in the trees nearby. A hint worth keeping in mind when looking for Cedar Waxwings: they often roost in large numbers in trees near their food source. As I walked closer, I saw them in the Toyon bushes in front of the cars in the gravel parking lot. Eureka! Got my camera at the ready.

Cedar Waxwing with a Toyon berry at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in the lower part of the picture.

I moved closely into range just as a couple got into separate cars and left. The man hesitated before he got into his car watching the Cedar Waxwings retreat into the trees. "Perhaps they will come back when we've left, " he said apologetically. I waited after they left.

Cedar Waxwing at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary eating Toyon Berries.

After a long while, the Cedar Waxwings began to fly back into the bushes in front of my car just as a noisy group of children went by. The birds flew back into the trees. I breathed deeply. Then I had an idea! If I used it as a blind, I could get even closer. After all, the bushes they were interested in were right in front of my car! It was perfect.

Cedar Waxwing at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary eating Toyon Berries.

So I got in my car and rolled down the window. I positioned my camera. After a few minutes, the crested gluttons returned to the bushes and began to eat the berries whole. Now, you might guess that birds that gorge themselves on fruit probably poop a lot. I had never contemplated this logical biological fact until suddenly I heard "Plop, plop, plop." Their poop fell like rain onto my car's pristine, white hood. I was torn between watching these wonderful birds and the fact that these wonderful birds were pooping on my brand-new car! I prayed the protective coat which was sold to me as protecting the car against bird poop damage was really working, and kept snapping. I am, after all, a birder which is why I bought the poop protection in the first place.

Gulp. Another berry down the gullet!

What a birder will do to see birds! So when you are out birding in Orange County, search the berried bushes and fruited trees near you for this gregarious, fruit-gorging group. You may see a flock of Cedar Waxwings in a Toyon bush near you.

Places to find Cedar Waxwings:

Huntington Central Park --including Shipley Nature Center

Irvine Regional Park in Orange, California

Mason Regional Park

Oak Canyon Nature Center

Peter's Regional Park

San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Santiago Oaks Regional Park

Yorba Regional Park

And any place with berries or fruit in the winter!

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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Cedar Waxwing--Bombycilla cedrorum

Cedar Waxwings at Shipley Nature Center in Huntington Central Park. The entire group numbered about 50 birds.
Cedar Waxwings are about berries. They eat insects, but they are berry aficionados. All About Birds calls them "the most frugivorous birds in North America." They surpass American Robins who also eat a lot of fruit. Cedar Waxwings will eat fruit--especially berries--until they are stuffed. And sometimes when they eat fermented berries, they fall off the trees in a drunken stupor. Fermented berries have even indirectly caused their deaths.

Courtesy of the US Fish and Game Service

Cedar Waxwings will pass berries from bird to bird until one of them eats it. They are very sociable and gregarious. They travel and feed in large groups, feeding and grooming each other. They eat berries from trees, bushes, and vines. When there are no berries, they eat flowers and pass them around in the same fashion. They also eat insects.

Courtesy of the US Fish and Game Service (Photographer David Menke)

Cedar Waxwings are so named because they have waxy substances on their wingtips and on the tips of their tails. The wingtips are red and the tip of the tail is yellow (orange if they eat a certain type of introduced honeysuckle). The cedar part of their name comes from the fact that they eat lots of cedar berries.

Courtesy of the US Fish and Game Service. (Photographer--David Menke). Notice the waxy yellow at the end of the tail feathers.

Cedar waxwings will sit and eat berries or will forage on the wing as above. Cedar Waxwings also catch insects in midair like a flycatcher. They will also pick insects off vegetation.

Courtesy of the US Fish and Game Service

It is no surprise that passing berries is part of this fruit-loving bird's courtship. And like any wedding, there is a little dancing involved. Male and female look alike and share nest duty. They stay together throughout the breeding season, building the nest and raising the young. Smart birds, they apparently recognize Cowbird eggs in their nests, and will desert the nest, damage the cowbird egg, or try to eject it from the nest. How effective their efforts are is not clear since they damage their own eggs sometimes in the process, and they will often desert their nest if it is parasitized by Cowbirds. Other species are more successful at getting rid of Cowbird eggs according to a study listed below.

You Tube Video

Widely know as gregarious gluttons, these loud, chatty birds will descend on anything with berries and pick it clean. Like avian locusts, they have been looked at unfavorably by farmers and orchard owners. They eat cedar berries, cherries, choke cherries, mulberries, hackberries and more. At one time they were allowed to be shot as a threat to agriculture. And they still face getting a pants full of buckshot or worse today. One strawberry farmer and his crew descended on a Walmart in Louisiana and bought out all their shotgun shells in 2005. He was hoping to save his crop. Don't know what happened to him and his crew, but Cedar Waxwings are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty.

Great views of Cedar Waxwings in this You Tube Video by Bill Meier--replaces previous video.

Cedar Waxwings are beautiful and fun to watch. They appear somewhat erratically depending on the available food. If you see a flock when you are out birding in Orange County, enjoy them, you never know when they will pop up again. I have seen them this year in Huntington Central Park in Huntington Beach, and years ago at Oak Canyon Nature Center. They have been seen in San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary and other locations in Orange County. In the San Fernando Valley, I have seen them at the Holy Spirit Center in Encino. Follow the berries.