Wildscaping for Waxwings

"Look!" My husband pointed to a flock of birds on a distant lawn and handed me the binoculars. "I thought they were starlings when I saw them flying. Then I thought they might be female cadinals, but they don't have the right markings and I've never seen cardinals in a flock."

I raised the binoculars and saw a group of sleek brown birds pecking at cedar berries that had fallen on the ground near a tree. A gleam of yellow and red on the wingtips, a smear of black across the eyes gave them a festive look against the gray-brown of the wintery Texas landscape.

"Cedar waxwings!" I hadn't seen these charming winter visitors in several years. These perky, chatty birds were frequent visitors to our home in Kentucky but I hadn't seen one around my area of Texas in a long time. We watched as they foraged and squabbled around the cedar tree. They sure enjoyed those cedar berries!

The reason that we don't always get Cedar Waxwings down here in Texas is because it isn't a reliable migrator. In scientific terms, it's called a "facultative migrant"; meaning that they'll migrate only if the food supply gets short. As long as the cedar berries and other berries are abundant, the Cedar Waxwing is willing to stay on through snow and ice and other conditions that would have other birds fleeing south for Miami as fast as they could flap!

In fact, cedar waxwings will enjoy almost any sort of fruit -- to the dismay of local farmers. One person reported that they ate an entire fruit crop of red cedars in only two days. Although its habits are annoying, it's also an important seed dispenser for red cedar and other native fruit trees. And once summer hits, the birds really begin to earn their keep as truly unparalleled insectivores. Common pests such as elm leaf beetles, weevils, carpenter ants, sawfly larvae, cicadas, scale insects, caterpillers, cankerworms, and all sorts of flying insects make up the Cedar Waxwing's summer diet.

Fortunately for those of us who love them, they’re a suburban bird and not at all uncomfortable with the suburban way of life. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as “just one cedar waxwing.” They like to hang around in groups, and where there’s one waxwing, there’s likely to be a colony of them.

Watch them closely for awhile and you’ll see an interesting feeding behavior. One bird will pick up a berry or an insect and then will pass it to another waxwing. Several Cedar Waxwings sitting in a row on a telephone line or fence will pass a berry or insect from one to another up and down the row in a strange little game until finally one bird decides to end the event and swallows the food.

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