"Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Others? Which Of These Things Isn't The Same?" Waxwings, Crossbills & Siskins

Bohemian waxwings gorging on crab apples

Cedar and Bohemian waxwings. Can you pick out which are which?

The Cedar waxwings in this photo are numbered so you can find them amongst the Bohemian waxwings. Cedars are slightly smaller. If you look under their tails, they are white. Bohemians have reddish coverts and less white around the face than Cedars.

In this collage, there are 105 birds.  Nine of them are Cedar waxwings. Double click on the collage to make it bigger, then see if you can pick out the nine birds that are different. The photo is repeated with numbers by the Cedar waxwings.

The photo on the right is of a Cedar waxwing. The image clearly shows the 'wax' tips of the primary feathers.

White-winged crossbills bickering with a Pine siskin over feeder rights, or maybe they are going to get it on!

     When I was a kid, I loved Highlights Magazine. The 'picture in a picture' puzzles fascinated me. I felt like they were made especially for me to figure out. How fast could I find a key hidden amongst a tree full of toucans or a shoe in the shapes of a leopard's spots? First published in 1946, the magazine is still going strong today. I read my first Highlights Magazine in Boston in 1964.
      I was a sickly child, so spent a lot of time in waiting rooms of doctors' offices. The year that I was nine, I was hospitalized several times with protracted fevers that medicine could neither remedy nor explain. For months, my temperature sky-rocketed then plummeted over and over again inexplicably. By the time I learned "Fever Of Unknown Origin," I had lost enough time from school that my academic progress was cause for concern.
     Monstrous ear aches kept me awake, moaning and rocking myself back and forth, alone in a quiet house where everyone else was sleeping. After a while, I quit crying because it just made my head hurt more. I stared into space waiting for the sun to come up, for sleep, for whatever until it was gone. Between bouts, I was weak and tired. My exhausted parents were frightened, the doctors worried. When the earaches stopped, the fevers continued.
     The first time I was hospitalized was in the middle of the night. I was in an isolation ward with babies in steel cribs with cages over the tops so they couldn't get out. Some of the babies could stand up. They'd hold onto the bars and jounce up and down, screaming until they were too exhausted to keep it up. They'd collapse in a heap of soggy diapers and sleep for a while, only to start up again the second they woke. No one came.
   The doctors wanted my blood when the fevers were in full swing. In the middle of the night, they'd wake me up to draw my blood. Dr. Lacey wore a white coat and had warm hands. "Count backwards from one hundred, Robin. Can you do that for me? Just start counting," he'd say. I watched the blood from the needle in my arm meander along a little tube into a vial, then another vile, and then a third. "ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six...." I whispered under my breath. This would go on for a week, then I'd go home. Before I was strong enough to go back to school, the fevers would start again, and back to the hospital I would go. I was always the same, though each time, the screaming babies were different.
     Eventually, I was sent to Peter Brent Brigham Hospital in Boston for two weeks. My family couldn't stay with me, so I was there alone. Tests were done, things that hurt and things a little girl shouldn't have to know about. I knew not to complain, not to cry, to be brave. I walked the halls of the old hospital staring up at the tallest ceilings I had ever seen. An occupational therapist was called to stave off my boredom. She taught me to hammer sheet copper. I hammered three daffodils nodding in the sun.
    For no good reason, the fevers stopped and stopped for good. In the mean time, I had read loads of Highlights Magazines. I particularly liked the puzzles where the reader had to pick out the one thing in the picture that was different from all the rest. I  became lightening fast at it, a skill that would serve me well as a birder in later years. I learned about big cats in Africa, penguins at the Arctic circle, Right whales in the sea,  and more. Those were the formative days of my eventual obsession with the natural world.
     All sentient creatures have the ability to discriminate. Our survival depends on being able to tell what plants are food or poison, if something is too hot to handle or a crevice too wide to jump. We get it right enough that we don't walk off cliffs or eat deadly mushrooms too often. Animals also use these skills for finding mates. In the case of waxwings, the red, 'wax' tips on the primary feathers are believed to signal the age of a bird. Younger birds that haven't had as much experience mating, nest building, laying eggs and rearing young have fewer wax tips than older, more street smart birds. Waxwings side hop when courting, suggesting that it's all the better to see the wax tips with. This seems simple enough, but mate picking is knotty business.
    We humans have more gaps in our understanding about what makes birds choose one another than we have solid science. To our eyes, the waxwings in the group photos above look so much alike, that unless we are looking for a difference, they all look the same. Though I have searched extensively, I have not found one single reference to reports of hybridization of Bohemian and Cedar waxwings. Logically, we would say that the birds can pick out subtle differences. But this is where it gets tricky: in spite of their powers of discrimination, there are birds that crossbreed readily. Mallards and American black ducks, Common and Barrow's goldeneyes,  and mergansers are some that do. It's not common, but it's not rare, either. In the 1980's there was a chick documented that was progeny of a Pine siskin and a Red crossbill, two birds of different species which look distinctly different by anyone's standards. The DNA of the chick was traced by ornithologists verifying its parentage [1]. Who'd a thunk it? This is one more reason to practice the adage of birders to "look at every bird." You might be the first to see the picture in the picture, the one that's not like the others. Keep reading your Highlights Magazines cover to cover.
    
 1. Tudge, C.  "Keeping Track: The Absolute Need To Classify," The Bird (2008), New York: Crown Publishers (2008), p77

Wonders Of The Waxwings - Cedar And Bohemian Waxwings

Cedar Waxwings

Bohemian Waxwings

"Forehead Up" is a Native American name for waxwings. I think that's because D.A. was already taken.

 

A group of waxwings are collectively known as an "ear-full" and a "museum" of waxwings

Seidenschwänze (Silky Tails) is what they are called in Germany.

     In the past three days, I have had two 'lifer' birds. "Life" or "Life Birds" are what birders call birds that they have seen for the first time. Each one of these gets added to a birder's "life list." Some say that the numbers on a life list are what separate the men from the boys of birding. There are "bird watchers" and "birders." "Bird watchers" are those who enjoy the birds but don't bother to learn to identify them. Some bird watchers live to merely tick birds off a list, thus building the list. "Birders" are those more interested in birding behavior, habitats and conservation. They are exacting in their identifications. "Birders" generally regard "Bird Watchers" with disdain, or at the very least, the begrudging tolerance one might bestow upon a snivelling younger sibling.  I fall somewhere in between. My Life List is pretty short by most standards (Like my weight, I'm not going to say what it is), because I'm fairly new to birding. Common birds may nonetheless be new birds for me. The longer a birder has been adding to their list, the harder it gets to add new birds. 

     I got my new lifers while racing back and forth to a nursing home to be with my grandmother. She is 100 years old; she has a long, rich life list. For the past four days, she has been trying to die without success. My husband says she's holding on because she is angry about the change in her astrological sign and is conducting a resistance demonstration. He, she and I are all, or at least were, Aries and proud of it.

     I've gone every day to sit with her. She is in and out of a coma, refusing all fluids and sustenance. Her lungs are filling as her old heart is slowly giving out. I'm not sure she even knows I'm there. Once in a while, she opens her eyes, but clearly sees nothing. When I stand up to stretch my howling back, she does clutch, as if fearing that I'm going to leave. It may be my imagination. We are just sitting, waiting. While she has been having her last life experiences, I've been racking up life firsts in birds, which gives me solace.

     On one of my trips to the nursing home, I saw my first Bohemian waxwings. There was a flock of 126 of them, a pretty good showing for a life first! The following day, I saw a second flock in the parking lot of the nursing home. Waxwings are gregarious, aggressive birds and very vocal. A flock or group of them is called an "ear-full."  Waxwings are characterised by soft silky plumage. Because of this, it's tricky to get feather detail in  photographs. They have unique red tips to some of the wing feathers where the shafts extend beyond the barbs. These tips look like sealing wax, and give the group its common name. When I was a teenager, I was a prolific letter writer. I enjoyed the whole process, including closing the flap with a dollop of hot, red wax and applying my seal to it. I still have my 'R' stamp, if not my astrological sign.

    Male and Female waxwings have the same mainly brown plumage, a black line through the eye and black under the chin, a square-ended tail with a red or yellow tip, and a pointed crest. The bill, eyes, and feet are dark. One of the quickest ways to tell the difference between Cedar waxwings and Bohemian waxwings is the underside, or "coverts" of the tail. As seen in the photos above, the Bohemian has a distinctly rusty red underside, where the Cedar does not. If the sun is shining, this feature is plainly seen even at a distance or on a bird in flight. 

     In North America there are only two species of waxwings. The Cedar waxwing is the more common, but is found only in this continent, while the Bohemian waxwing  is more rare in this hemisphere. It's a bird of northern latitudes. There is a third waxwing, the Japanese waxwing. You've probably guessed it's found in Japan. If we ever see them here, it will be because the earth has shifted on its axis again and we'll get a fourteenth zodiac sign.

     Cedar waxwings like cedar and juniper berries, thus the name. Bohemian waxwings are named for their wandering, vagrant ways. We only get these arboreal irruptives here when they push south from  the northern forests in search of food. True Bohemians, they are known for suddenly appearing, then disappearing. As a German immigrant, my grandmother referred to herself as a Bohemian, too. To be as accurate as a true birder, I should say that she was really my first Bohemian.

     All waxwings like fruit, though they eat insects in spring when egg laying and feeding young. During the winter, a birder can expect to find waxwings devouring Crabapples and thickets of Winterberries. There are some color variations in feathers resulting from which fruits the birds eat. Orange, rather than yellow bands sometimes seen on the tails are attributed to pigments found in an alien honeysuckle fruit introduced to their diet. There are several places with Crabapple trees that I visit frequently during the winter hoping for waxwings. Waxwings and berry bushes are closely linked; flocks gather, devour one crop and then, almost mysteriously, disappear to find the next. They pass the seeds right through their systems as they go, making a mess, a behavior belying their gentlemanly appearance. In a day or two, when the fruit is stripped, they vanish - here today, gone tomorrow. I was lucky to have seen the Bohemians. Had my timing differed by mere minutes, I would not have been able to add them to my life list.

     Any day now, my grandmother will disappear like the waxwings, too. Though it hasn't always been tidy with her either, I'm lucky to have known her, to have added her to my life list.

To encourage visits by waxwings to your yard grow:
Winterberry (Ilex verticillata)
Crabapples
Honeysuckle choose a native species, please
Serviceberry (Amelanchier)
raspberries
Mountain Ash trees
roses with small hips
Cotoneaster
Dogwoods
Cedar trees
Juniper bushes
Mulberries

Witmer, Mark C., Mountjoy, D. James, and Elliot, Lang. "Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla Cedrorum)." in The Birds of North America, Number 309 (Alan Poole and Frank Gill, editors.) The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C. 1997.

Tyler, W.M. "Bombycilla Cedrorum: Cedar Waxwing" in Life Histories of North American Wagtails, Shrikes, Vireos and Their Allies. (Arthur Cleveland Bent, editor.) New York: Dover Publications: 1965 (Unedited reprint of: U.S. Government Printing Office: Smithsonian Institution United States National Museaum, Bulletin 197: 1950). pp.79-102

Bent, Arthur Cleveland, editor. "Bombycilla Garrulus: Bohemian Waxwing" in Life Histories of North American Wagtails, Shrikes, Vireos and Their Allies. New York: Dover Publications: 1965 (Unedited reprint of: U.S. Government Printing Office: Smithsonian Institution United States National Museum, Bulletin 197: 1950). pp.62-79.

Stokes, Donald & Lillian. Guide to Bird Behavior, Volume 2. New York: Little, Brown &Company. 1983. (Cedar Waxwing, pp. 177-188)

Sibley, David Allen. National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2000. (Waxwings: pp. 423.)

Sibley, David, et. al, editors. National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2001. (Waxwings: pp. 485-487; waxwing article by Mark Witmer.)

Martin, Alfred G. Hand-Taming Wild Birds at the Feeder. Brattleboro, VT: Alan C. Hood & Company. 1963. (Waxwings: pp 113-117)

Leister, Mary. "Cedar Waxwings: Unpredictable Birds." BirdWatcher's Digest. November/December 1991 (Vol 14, No. 2). pp. 50-55.

Iliff, Marshall J. "Identify Yourself: Waxwings -- Cedar versus Bohemian." BirdWatcher's Digest. October 2001 (Vol 24, No. 1). pp. 38-42.

Drunken Cedar- Wicked Waxwings

Cedar Waxwing enjoying a Choke Cherry. Nice hair-do!

This one looks like a burglar in a mask sneaking up on the berries.

Cedar Waxwings get their name from the red tips of their wings which someone thought looked like red sealing wax.

 

"You're going to get that stuff stuck in your braces and your jaw will glue shut!"

I think Cedar Waxwings are one of the most dramatic birds that we have. That says a lot considering that they are a nearly drab, sable brown color and they have bad hair. I guess it is the mask that does it for me. I have always gravitated to men who have the aura of bad about them, my current husband not withstanding. He's a super nice guy; everybody says so. Sometimes, I find his virtuousness and people's constantly telling me what a kind, nice man he is to be tedious. They are absolutely correct in their assessments, but it's like living with the Dali Llama. I'm just not up to the challenge and find it burdensome. I'm not that nice. If my husband were a bird, he would be a Black-capped chickadee and I would be a Sharp-shinned hawk.
     David says that when birds eat berries, they get drunk from fermentation of the berries and that's what makes them crash into windows. His excusing the birds and blaming their behavior on the demon Choke Cherry is an example of his more benevolent mindset than my own. I say "Blame the birds!" They could stick to eating spiders or snakes and staying home instead of driving into my windows. There should be laws, honestly. I'm going to make it a point to call my congressman about this.
     Another thing I think I'll call my representative about is legislating the erratic appearance and disappearances of certain birds. I'm not talking about pollution or global warming, either. I'm talking about the unexplained no-shows. This year, there are hardly any Ruby-throated hummingbirds here. Usually, we have eight to ten of them zipping around and I have to practically beat them back with a stick. They threaten to lodge in my hair and I can't keep up with filling the feeders. The feeders are the same ones hung in the same places, too. This year, however, I've only seen two hummingbirds at once and not every day. It's a mystery. David says the hummingbirds are cute and he misses them. See the difference in our thinking? It's amazing that we are married. The Cedar Waxwings, however are all over the place. Everyday, I see and hear them. They have a distinct, electronic buzz of a sound unmistakable in the trees even when they aren't visible. Most summers, I rarely see Cedar Waxwings and associate them with spring and fall migrations. The Bad Boys in masks have commitment issues this far south, heading generally north for picking up chicks. Their prevalence here this summer is as unexplained as the absence of the hummingbirds. I think there should be a law against this irregularity. At least, there should be some expectation of regular appearances -like if you miss too many dental appointments, you get dropped from the patient panel. If my husband were an orthodontist, he would be the only broke one on the planet. He would give everybody a break, no matter what their flimsy excuse for not showing up.

The Outdoor Shower Season - Day Light Savings, Red-Winged Blackbird & More

This Canada goose has a mate and they have been coming to the shore right in front of the house every day. I think they may be scouting out a nesting site. They make a tremendous honking racket. When I've been on the phone I've been asked if there were geese in the yard as the caller could hear them.  I'm assuming they are a mated pair as I've heard her call him "Honey" and he calls her "Babe."
...............................................................................................................
It's official! This morning, I lurched awake and immediately, looked at the clock. It said it was quarter to eight; I had grossly overslept! Nonetheless, I felt, as my father would have said, shot out of a canon. What was going on here? What was going on was that for my brain and body, it was actually quarter to seven. David, in his state of glee over Day Light Savings, had leaped from bed before daylight and made busy changing all of the clocks. He has drained the anti-freeze from his outdoor shower and had his first of the season outdoor eye opener. It's thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit and the wind is blowing thirty-five miles per hour. He is prancing around, whooping and hollering that I should try it, "It's exillarating!" He shouts. "No thank you," is my polite subdued response. There are primroses and crocuses blooming in my gardens, but they don't look enthusiastic to me. They are healthy enough, but they don't look like they really mean it. They don't look like they want to be out of bed this early either. It is official, though. Spring is here even if we get a foot of snow, which we could. The lists of projects are being compiled, the lawnmowers are being tuned, blades sharpened and the migratory birds are arriving. There will be no peace in the Robinson house until November.

                                                                  Northern Cardinal in all of his glory. He has a girl friend here, too. Even pigeons are pretty if seen in the right light.

This Cedar Waxwing was one of twenty feasting on rose hips on the Popham Road yesterday. I looked, there were no Bohemian Waxwings in the bunch. A reader told me that I had erred in my previous post about the Black Guillemot. I had said that they turn white in the summer, which is not true; they turn black. The good news is that meant the one I photographed had molted to its summer plumage about 75%, a sure sign of spring.
 
This is a Red-winged blackbird. Its epaulets are concealed. It does have bright red under the scapulars, the median coverts. They show the red in flight and when they are flexing the pipes for girls and to impress other guys. They are very migratory, so it's a sure sign of warm days to come.

Aspens

ASPENS are as beautiful as everyone told me that they would be. And what greater place to see them in their classic loveliness than in Aspen, Colorado? Magnificent swaths of ‘Colorado Gold’ spill into every valley offset by dark spruce and snow. The most wind sensitive broadleaf in the plant kingdom, they whisper, rustle and quake just as legend has it. The leaves begin to turn from green to shades of amber in September. By October, they are drifting through the air and piling on the ground like sparkling coins. The massive clonal colonies get their starts from single seedlings. The trees above the ground live 40-50 years, but the roots below live for thousands. Each tree is a clone of the rootstock below. For this reason, it's rare to see pink or orange Aspens in the natural world. In Utah, the Pando (‘Trembling Giant‘) Colony is believed to be 80,000 years old, the oldest known living organism on earth. Aspens are indicators of ancient woodlands; they are also climax trees. In forestry, this means the trees that naturally dominate after other trees have died off. Where avalanches plow down mammoth stands of spruce aspens take over. I almost climaxed myself seeing wave after wave of the divine trees. If I had gasped “WOW!” one more time, my jaw might have dislocated.

This is the best part of the road on Hagerman Pass which runs between Leadville and Basalt. It quickly turned to serious off-road ruts and dips. Thank God for the rental Jeep!

Every bend in the road where there was a creek revealed beaver activity. I've never seen so much beaver action in my life! They love the soft wood of the Aspens.

A rare stand of pink Aspens, photo taken on Hagerman Pass looking south 

A Cedar Waxwing in a field of gold