SCHIESS: Cedar waxwings – Beautiful thieves - East Idaho News
Living the Wild Life

SCHIESS: Cedar waxwings – Beautiful thieves

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I felt the wind from a pair of wings while picking raspberries as I tried to get the ripe ones before the birds got them. My cap must have looked like a perfect perch to eyeball the patch before the bird realized that I was its competitor and enemy. The Cedar waxwing joined four others in a dead tree and proceeded to tell me that I was stealing food from their babies.

It finally settled in the chokecherry bush for a meal and flew off with a berry for the family. A week later the young would join the adults of the flock in the chokecherry bush for a week of good eating.

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In southeastern Idaho these beautiful thieves are invading berry-producing bushes where they have set up homes to raise their young.

Hard to see and locate in the thick needles and leaves of mature trees, their soft call in the morning and early evening gives away their hiding places. Their song is not melodic, but a distinctive buzzy, high-pitched trill. Once you learn to recognize this sound, you will usually hear it before you see the birds as they fly in.

This year pairs of Cedar waxwings have nested in Idaho Falls, Rexburg and surrounding towns picking off ants and bees attracted to sap producing conifers before most berries ripened. These berry-eating machines are late nesters, often waiting until berries, as well as insects, are available for the young.

They love to invade raspberry patches as well as currant and gooseberry bushes but the ripe chokecherries or the ornamental Canadian cherry, seem to be the preferred food.

Waxwings get their name from small, red, wax-like appendages on the secondary feathers on their wings. A beautiful yellow band runs along the end of the tail and mask-like face sets off their striking tan plumage. In the eastern part of the United States, these birds have started feeding on an ornamental honeysuckle berry that turns the yellow band orange.

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These birds are year-round resident of Idaho where they feed on many different berries, flowers, and insects, with cedar and juniper fruit dominating their menu during the winter. They are probably the most specialized fruit-eating bird in America. Because they often feed on fermented fruit, they become vulnerable to intoxication and death from eating rotting berries.

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Young waxwings are fed insects before they become berry eaters. Adults can be seen picking bees and other insects off leaves and pine needles and feeding them to their young.

Waxwings are a social bird, sometimes congregating in groups of 100 to near 1,000 during the winter months. These groups will travel from place to place looking for a crop of fruit or berries and will feed until the berries are gone. After the young can fly long distances, these groups will harvest Russian olives and berries dried on bushes.

These elegant birds during the winter can be seen in large flocks roosting in leafless trees near cedar thickets or a flowering crabapple tree. But during the berry-picking time, they become thieves that are not afraid to buzz and harass humanoids for what both consider their property.

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