Bird watching: cedar waxwing

Self-tutoring about birds: the tutor recalls a remarkable sighting.

Although they live here, I haven’t seen a cedar waxwing out west. They’re yellow with a black mask across the eyes.

I was aware of cedar waxwings as a kid and often looked around in case I might see one. Then, I lived on the east coast, but they live across Canada, so I was still in range.

My father spent many hours in the garden we had in the Annapolis Valley from 1980-1983. He mentioned seeing them fairly commonly, but observed that you need to be outside a lot – and not moving much – for the best chance to see them: “A flock might stay in one place for quite a while – maybe 15 minutes to half an hour or more. Once gone, though, they might not return for a couple of weeks.”

I’ve never had luck with finding birds while looking for them. However, I’ve been luckier with chance encounters. In late summer, 1984, in Argentia, Newfoundland, I was walking alone in late afternoon. In some deciduous scrub up a small hill I noticed a flock of birds, cheerily singing and jumping from branch to branch.

Within a couple of minutes I knew something was different about these birds versus ones I was used to and I wondered why they attracted my attention so magnetically. Their color seemed indistinct. Not wanting to scare them away, I approached slowly uphill, but not too close.

Fifteen feet closer I noticed the dark masks across their eyes. Indeed they were yellow, but drab (which could have been because they were between me and the sun). I realized they were cedar waxwings!

I walked slowly along, stopping every few paces, beholding them. Parallel with me, they, too, moved along the line of scrub they perched in. They were a tight flock, more vocal and joyous than you might expect from most birds. I was about 40 feet away, but they apparently took no notice of me. They were eating something, perhaps insects on the branches or fruit that had developed on them. No doubt they moved to fresh branches as they exhausted the food whence they perched.

As my father had predicted, those cedar waxwings did indeed stay there for a long time. Eventually I moved down tighter to the road and left them to their joyous feeding in the late afternoon sun.

I haven’t noticed a cedar waxing since.

Source:

Hoar, de Smet et al. Birds of Canada. Edmonton: Lone Pine Publishing, 2010.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.