The Cedar Waxwing

The word waxwing and the word fruit are essentially synonymous. Waxwings eat fruit, fruit, fruit, and more fruit. Of all the birds in North America, waxwings eat the most fruit. These are also very well liked birds, and I can see why. They look cool, sound cool, and travel in large flocks. If you don’t already like waxwings, I intend to change your mind! Listen to this episode to learn all about these awesome birds: what they look like, what they sound like, their habits, and more. 

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Welcome to Bird of the Day. My name is Sam Rogers, and I'm a 13-year-old birder from Eugene, Oregon. This is an informative, entertaining podcast about anything and everything birds. This is episode 16. This one is all about the cedar waxwing. The word waxwing and the word fruit are essentially synonymous. Waxwings eat fruit, fruit, fruit, and more fruit. Of all the birds in North America, wax wings probably eat the most fruit. These are also very well-liked birds, and I can see why. They look cool, sound cool, and travel in large flocks. If you don't already like wax wings, I intend to change your mind. In this episode, we will be learning all about these awesome birds, what they look like, what they sound like, their habits, and more. Waxwings are small to medium-sized songbirds. I think they're very silky and smooth looking overall. The cedar waxwing is essentially just three colors, all blended together. A brown head, which turns to a gray wings and back, and a yellowish belly. They also have some cool black markings around their eyes, a yellow tailtip, and a nice little tuft of feathers coming out of the back of their head, kind of like a blue jay. This crest can be raised or lowered. But the coolest plumage feature of this bird is the small red spots on its wings. These are made of keratin, just like the feathers around them, but they are hardened into a droplet that extends from the end of the feather. This is where the name wax wing comes from, the waxy tips of their feathers. It is thought that these feather tips could be status signals, or they might help protect the tips of the feathers from wear. These are colored with what are called carotenoid pigments, which are yellow, orange, and red hues found in plants, like carrots. These waxings eat a lot of fruit, which is rich in carotenoids, so their bodies use the pigments to color their feathers. Those yellow tips on the tail feathers are also colored by carotenoids. However, these tips aren't always yellow. Morro's honeysuckle, a Japanese plant that has been introduced to North America, makes small, glass-like red berries in pairs of two, and wax wings love to eat them. You've probably seen one of these plants before, even if you didn't recognize it. Well, wax wings really like to eat these berries, even though some of them are not native. When a wax wing eats some of these red berries, it ingests the red carotenoids in the plant. If this wax wing is molting its tail feathers at that time, then the red pigment will combine with the normal yellow pigment to make orange. This will lead to the bird having an orange instead of yellow tailtip. The interesting thing is that cedar wax wings with orange tailtips would not have been a thing until the 1950s, when these plants were introduced to North America. Before that, they just ate the native berries with the normal carotenoid pigments. These tail colors don't seem to affect the birds at all. Anyway, enough about carotenoid pigments. There are three species of wax wings across the world: the Bohemian waxwing, Japanese waxwing, and the cedar waxwing. All these birds are in the same family, bombicillidae. All wax wings look pretty similar, but bohemian and Japanese wax wings have some more orange and reddish coloring on them than cedar waxwings do. Bohemian waxwings live in the far north all around the world, and Japanese waxwings live in, well, Japan. Cedar waxwings, for the record, live only in North America, but they can be found as far south as Costa Rica in winter. These birds are very gregarious, meaning they like to travel in flocks. To find waxwings, listen for their very high calls. Sometimes these calls are the only clue that waxwings are in the area. They might be sitting almost silently on a nearby bush, quietly eating berries, or stealthily flying overhead in tight flocks. I think of these birds as inconspicuous and easy to miss. You have to be alert and a good listener to spot them. That was the Cedar Waxwing at a glance. Now onto its behavior, diet, and breeding. Of course, waxwings are only small birds, so they can't eat large fruit like apples or pears, nor can they eat fruit with rinds, like oranges or watermelons. However, berries, grapes, and many other small fruits are all on the list. Some favorites of cedar waxwings include service berries, mulberries, dogwood berries, and even strawberries. However, they also really like to eat non-native invasive plants like crabapple, hawthorn, or Russian olive. These birds eat a lot of sugar, and they have a special gut biome that lets them get the most sugar they can out of their diet. Waxwings are sort of like big fruit-eating hummingbirds. They have very, very low protein requirements, and so they can eat only fruit for up to two months in a row. When they do need some protein, they get it from insects they catch mid-air, much like a flycatcher. There are many tropical birds that eat a lot of fruit as well, such as toucans, hornbills, and even fruit doves. But very few of these live in the northern hemisphere. Waxwings are sort of unique in that they are some of the only frugivorous birds that live in the northern hemisphere. And in case you didn't know, frugivorous is just a fancy word that science nerds like me use to mean an animal that eats only or mostly fruit. Cedar waxwings are somewhat migratory. They move farther north in summer and then come south in winter. But this is hard to notice and they are definitely not one of the obvious classic migrant species. Instead, wax wings are nomadic in winter, moving around in flocks in search of fruiting plants. They can appear almost anywhere at almost any time. This makes it very hard for scientists to study migrations in this species, because it can be hard to tell when a bird or group of birds is migrating or just wandering around. Cedar waxwings are not quite as nomadic as some other waxwing species, like the Bohemian waxwing, but all wax wings wander around in winter to some extent. Cedar waxwings are also very sociable. They really, really like to be in flocks. Seeing just one or two wax wings, especially in winter, is a little unusual. Some of the biggest waxwing flocks can number in the hundreds, but it is much more common to see flocks of 10 or 20 roaming around. Another interesting fact, cedar waxwings don't really have any specific habitat requirements. I mean, don't go looking for them in the Arctic tundra, but they can really be found just about anywhere there are trees or large bushes. Cedar waxwings don't even really need to be right next to fruit trees at all times. However, wax wings are much more common where there are high densities of their favorite food, so if you want to see some, look for fruit-bearing trees or bushes. I would expect a bird with such a specialized diet would need to be near fruit trees at all times, but that is clearly not the case with cedar wax wings. These birds also have some elaborate courtship behaviors that enhance the pair bond. Courtship hopping consists of the two birds sitting on a branch. Then, one bird, usually the male, will hop forward towards the female. When they reach each other, they will often touch bills, and then the male will hop back to his original spot on the branch. Now this process repeats, but this time the female does the hopping. They will repeat this over and over, sometimes even up to twelve times in a row. Oftentimes, this display is a little more complicated. In courtship feeding, the same moves as courtship hopping are performed, but this time, instead of just touching bills, they pass a food item to their partner. The birds will also both face in the same direction, forward when they are hopping. To me, this display sort of looks like a Newton's cradle, with the birds as little balls. Now, if you don't know what a Newton's cradle is, I would recommend you look one up because it's kind of hard to explain. Once two birds have paired up, the female will lay about four to five white, speckled eggs in the nest. Cedar waxwings make cup nests, with a rough bull shape and an open top. They will use all sorts of materials, from bark to roots, stems, leaves, grasses, and sticks. Now waxwings are odd in that they are one of the latest nesting birds in North America, only starting their nest by June at the earliest. This is probably because the young need to eat a lot of fruit, which is much more easily found in summer. Once these eggs hatch, the young will stay in the nest for about two weeks, all while growing rapidly. After those fourteen days, they are officially deemed fledglings. They will make their way out of the nest, but continue to be fed by their parents for another week or so. But after that, they are full-feathered, crested cedar waxwings. As they grow older, they will gain more and more waxy tips on their feathers, soon earning their name. That was all about the Cedar Waxwing, an awesome, fruit-loving songbird. Now on to the Carrier Pigeon Corner. Welcome to the Carrier Pigeon Corner. This is where you get to be a part of the show. In other words, I will be answering questions about birds sent to me by my listeners. It doesn't matter what specifically it is, just anything birds. You can submit your questions on the podcast website, bird of thedaypodcast.com, or in the link to the forum in the show notes. Sometimes I don't know the answers to these questions right off the bat, so to answer them, I had to do a little bit of research. But of course, this wouldn't be possible without my trusty carrier pigeon, Earl. Well, what have the listeners sent for us today, Earl? Okay. I see. Well, our question today is also about cedar wax wings. This one comes from Peter. It reads I live in the semi-area desert of the Texas panhandle, and I only see wax wings in December, as, I presume, they are just passing through. I started keeping bees several years ago, and I have a hive on my platform up in a tree in my backyard. Two December ago, I saw a significant number of wax wings in that tree, and even sitting on the hive, which I thought was unusual, just because I had never seen that many wax wings in the yard before, but I didn't think much of it. A couple days later it was quite warm, and so I didn't see the sort of bee activity I would have expected around that hive. So I investigated and all the bees were gone. It was like the bee rapture. All the honey and everything was still there, but zero bees. So my question, do wax wings eat bees? And could a group of twenty to thirty wax wings wipe out a hive of around 10,000 honeybees in a couple of days? Do beekeepers have to worry in general about some bird species wreaking havoc in their apiaries? Now, I am definitely not an expert in bees or beekeeping, but I don't think that the wax wings wiped out your hive, Peter. Cedar waxwings will often catch insects mid-air, but they almost never eat bees or wasps, and they certainly wouldn't be able to make that large of an impact on a hive. In winter, wax wings move farther south, like many birds, and move around in flocks. You probably had a flock of wax wings that were just hanging around in your area for a couple of days. It was just a coincidence that they were near the hive. There has never been a report of cedar waxwings eating bees or wasps, and almost all of their insect diet is eaten in spring and summer. Some other birds will occasionally eat bees, but normally not enough to destroy a whole hive. In Europe, Asia, and Australia, there are birds called bee eaters, named for their habit of catching bees or wasps from mid-air and then pulling off the stingers to make them edible. However, there are no bee eaters in Texas, and even where they do live, bee eaters do not pose much of a threat to beehives. They don't eat enough bees to actually make a difference. In North America, some bee eating birds include the summer tanager, eastern kingbird, and purple marten. Who knows why all of your bees disappeared, but I can assure you it was not the bird's fault. That was episode 16, all about the cedar waxwing. I think waxwings are awesome birds, and they are different from many other birds in North America, which makes them kind of cool. I hope you have a chance to see Cedar Waxwings in your neck of the woods, and appreciate this one of a kind bird. Now thank you for listening all the way to the end, and I will see you in the next episode.