I caught up with some waxwings near my home on Thursday. Huntingdon races were abandoned because of the freezing ground and my central heating had chosen to pack up a couple of days earlier. In addition the car’s battery couldn’t cope with the cold and the AA had had to come out and get me going.
I needed cheering up and a walk at my local Stanwick gravel pits was needed but I decided to detour to the nearby village of Chelveston where waxwings had been seen on the previous couple of days.
Findings waxwings is a matter of looking at the tops of trees and checking anything that is starling sized for crests and looking for flocks of birds eating berries. In this case it was easier still – I just spotted a local birder with a camera and long lens, drove up to him and asked whether there were any waxwings about. He smiled and pointed above my car to the two waxwings on the wires above my head.
The birds were, as usual, very tame, and, as always, very beautiful.
The other members of this small flock, seven birds in all, were sitting at the top of a tall tree. Their crests were obvious but I wanted a closer look – and they obliged by all lining up on the telephone wires close by.
One consequence of waxwings visiting our villages and towns is that you tend to get into conversation with non-birders (they do exist!) while watching these lovely Scandinavian visitors. One lady wound down her car window and asked what we were looking at. She seemed entirely uninterested in the answer and wound up her window and drove off without giving these birds a single glance.
In contrast, a couple unloading their shopping from their car were fascinated by the birds across the street and were keen to hear all about them. They were interested by the fact that waxwings rush into the UK in varying numbers each year in late October. Some years, like this one, there are lots (as there were the winter before last) and in others there are few.
Most are seen on the east coast and the north of Britain but in waxwing winters they spread across the country and are even seen in the West Country where I grew up (but where I never saw waxwings in my youth). For there to be waxwings in Northamptonshire there must be lots around.
These waxwings were feeding on a pyracantha and there were only few berries left (I was told that the bush had been covered with berries two days ago but had been stripped by the waxwings). They sat on the wires, quietly making their trilling call and then flying down for a few berries.
As they sat on the wires, facing me, their black bibs were very striking. As they flew down to the berries their yellow tail-tips were noticeable. They have black eye-liner and white streaks between bib and eye-patches. But one facing me erected its crest and for an instant reminded me of Chris Packham – I’m not sure why.
Look out for waxwings in your local supermarket, your garden or the seedier parts of town such as industrial estates. They are looking for berries and may be feeding on them somewhere near you right now. If you come across them they will make a cold day warm.
And I’m very grateful to Tim Melling for letting me use his images of this lovely bird in this blog.
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Here’s a few tips Mark, a)nip down to a motor factor/shop, they have this spray called “cold start”, you spray it all over your battery terminals forming a barrier,spray it into your airfilter etc, works brilliantly. You’d be best doing it the night before b)cover the inside of your engine bay with some old covers/towels including the battery keeping it warm and c)most people don’t because of car alarms etc, but disconnect your battery, this stops the cold draining it, and before you start yor engine turn off anything electrical heaters/radios etc.
As for the Waxwings I was watching some recently catching little spiders drifting on the wind, I too notice some “non-birders” reaction when they stop to ask what are you watching, some develop this look as if to say “I wish I hadn’t ask?” and some show curiosity, I find/found that if you ramble on about where they’ve come from etc they switch off, however if you just say Waxwings and hand them your binoculars you get a fascinating response, try it. I did get a reaction from some Eastern Europeans at a carwash, “we see them all the time in the winter back home”, “they get drunk off the berries, that’s when you should photograph them they can’t fly”. The last one had me bemused and had to check this “fact”, apparently eating berries does get them intoxicated and temporaily prevents them flying, but wether that means “drunk” or slightly poisoned I’m not sure, but according to my book they have a more efficent liver then humans to deal with this…..
A few years ago I was on the train to London and stopping at Chippenham I saw what on first glance were Starlings in a berry tree in the station carpark – but my brain said ‘hang on a second’ – Starlings eating berries ? And it was a stunning group of Waxwing only slightly let down by the tinted windows of the train !
Chippenham is my neck of the woods, I live only 4 miles outside of town. We had waxwings in the winter of 2010-11, but none last year. However, I saw a small flock 10 days ago, outside my parents house. Quite a lucky find because I had only gone there to drop my car off before walking to school to pick my kids up. Glad I did now, I love waxwings, they’re great!
Nick – they are great!
Fantastic birds, I’ve just managed three this autumn/winter flying passed the office window about a month ago. This despite the fact that my home town has hosted them in numbers for the last month on and off!
My partner who lives in mis Wales has or had never seen them despite several attempts. However she rang me this week to say that she had finally seen about 35 whilst loading her christmas shopping into the car in Newtown, the call having alerted her to look up to the nearby trees.
I did once not so many years ago see 140 without leaving the house.
They are my favourite bird and I risk life and limb to hang apples back onto the tree especially for them . At the moment there are a flock of 8 birds feeding voraciously only about 40 ft away. Around our two local schools are several rowan trees and some swedish whitebeam. Some of these rowans have very large berries and birds find it difficult to eat them and so the berries remain on the tree until well into the winter. I collected some of these larger berries and have grown rowan trees from them and planted 40 plus trees around the village specifically for the waxwings. These trees are now 8ft high .
In 2004 we had a massive flock of waxwings near the local schools and I took some video of them and tried to count them from freeze frames. I got a friend to check the numbers and we reckoned to have a flock of approaching 2000. Of course local bird recorders typically did not believe this figure even though I have evidence.
I have a slideshow here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Tp3cXK9Tk which tells you how to age and sex waxwings and shows some of their interesting behaviour
DavidH – I’ve just looked out of the window but there are no waxwings here. I envy you.
That’s a very interesting slideshow on youtube – lovely images and I didn’t know that about ageing and sexing waxwings. If I’d known on Thursday I would have given it a test in the field.
Thank you very much – enjoy your waxwings.
Mark here is a tip to attract waxwings into your garden; plants the yellow berried sorbus joseph rock or the pink berried sorbus pink pagoda. These hold their berries until well into winter unlike the native rowan which may be cleaned off in September by blackbirds aand redwings.
When watching waxwings feeding take note of how quickly each bird can consume a vast amount of berries and also how quickly they are passed right through the bird. Here is another waxwing video from 2010 which shows just how much they love the yellow berried rowans. We have now had large numbers of waxwings in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2012.
I wonder if this may become an annual event. There was a flock of 300 waxwings at Arnside Nott in N. England last week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcC2YadPQbI
DavidH – thanks for the tip. Yes these occasional years seem to be getting more regular – I wonder why?
I wonder if the increasing frequency of irruption years is associated with a southward breeding range extension. In July I was surprised to see a Waxwing while walking through some forest in Dalarna, central Sweden. This was about 250 miles south of the breeding range as mapped in the 1997 EBCC Atlas, but there seem to be a lot of July Waxwing records south to Dalarna in recent years according to the Fennoscandia birds website:
http://www.artportalen.se/fennoscandia_birds.asp
Meanwhile, here in NE Scotland (usually the most reliable area for waxwings), numbers have been quite modest this winter, probably as a result of a poor rowan crop. I have seen two groups, of 20 and 7 (the latter outside my office window), whereas in each of the three previous invasions (2004,2008 and 2010) I saw totals of at least 400, including a flock of 900 in Aberdeen in 2008.
Great pictures! I love the drinking shots – a bit different to the typical waxwing photo!
I saw a flock of 20 on a farm advisory visit last week, and whilst the farmers had not heard of them before they were delighted to see something unusual on their farm feeding along a stewardship hedgerow. I also saw around 100 yesterday at an out of town shopping park in Shrewsbury. Despite them showing down to few metres none of the hundreds of shoppers were taking a blind bit of notice.
There is much more on Waxwing behaviour, ageing, sexing, movements, etc on ringing group websites such as
http://www.davidnorman.org.uk/MRG/Waxwings.htm
http://grampianringing.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/waxwings-good-bad-uglyand-awesome.html
http://midwalesringers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/a-luring-waxwings.html
David – many thanks
David Norman
thanks for these links. I am not a ringer and do not really agree with ringing. I have only been able to find out that of 4500 ringed birds only three returned to the UK in subsequent years. I would be interested to know if any pass through into France and which route they take if they are heading back to northern scandinavia. Also why not put a few satelite tags on several birds to gain sufficient data so that ringing no longer needs to take place. One of the waxwings ringed in my village was split from the flock on release and hung around on its own for a couple of weeks before no doubt falling prey to a sparrowhawk.
Ringing birds is done mainly to find out about population dynamics, breeding productivity, survival/ mortality and other factors that directly feed in to conservation. http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/ringing-scheme
Satellite tags cannot give us any of these important data, which also vary from year to year. See, for instance, http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/surveys/ces/ces-results/preliminary-ces-results/2012 showing that the breeding productivity of migrant warblers in 2012 was the worst for thirty years.
But if you are only interested in migration and maps, look at the online ringing reports such as http://blx1.bto.org/ring/countyrec/resultsall/rec10480all.htm (for Waxwing).
David – fair points, although quite a lot of ringing is actually done because it is fun.
I saw my first ever waxwings with my 11 year old son, a fantastic moment. One thing tht has struck me recently I the total lack of berries of any sort. Our native berry eating birds are going to have a tough winter ahead. One good piece of ELS is the hedge cutting restrictions, this year the birds will need every berry they can get.
David H – thanks for the waxwing bait tip. Having recently bought our first house, (with large garden for the hens) my wife and I are looking for suitable waxwing trees / bushes to plant.
Mark – This years waxwings seemed particularly slow to cotton on (or cotoneaster on?) to the fact that the business parks and supermarkets in the “Royal County” have plenty of ornamental berry trees for them. I think Berkshire was one of the last counties this year that waxwings were officially recorded.
That said, they’re here now, in Reading, Wokingham and my neck of the woods, Bracknell.
I watched a wee flock on a newbuild housing estate t’other day in beautiful sunshine and got a photo or two (although not as good as Mr.Melling’s)
http://www.dmackdimages.co.uk/blog/2012/12/another-waxwing-winter
And today at dawn, I watched a flock of thirteen feed from two wee rowan trees in a Wokingham business district with a few more (darker) photos:
http://www.dmackdimages.co.uk/blog/2012/12/more-waxwings
There were two of us watching the “chattering silk-tails”. Me and a nice old boy with about £10K worth of camera equipment including a hyowge lens. (I bet he got some nice photies).
An old(ish) lady wandered up to us (rare for me as I unfortunately look like I am about to kill people even when I’m in a jovial mood!)
I explained to her what we were gawping at and she was enthralled. Or at least, if she wasn’t, she pretended very well.
She had never heard of waxwings (even though she certainly knew what siskins were as they visit her garden each winter she told me) – and I think (hope) that these vagabonds from the north have got themselves a new fan…
I’ve always thought “West is best” – for scenery, interesting towns, villages and even cities and for the best rugby in the world of course. (Bristol).
But…. whilst we live in the SE of England, for now I can cope because I’m far more likely to see these Bohemians in the east than the west (although to be fair, the west (like 2010/11) is getting its share of the birds this year n all).
There are some good things about winter!
Doug – great comment!
I’d love to agree that the West has the best rugby but even as a Bristolian I would acknowledge that you need a very long memory to recall those days. However, I agree with you that the occasional bohemian is only fair compensation for Westerners in exile.
I feel like the only person who hasn’t seen one this Winter. There have been sightings in Knutsford and Northwich, but not my me. Just had to make do with a Bittern this weekend instead. From Findlay
Findlay – bittern is good but waxwings are worth waiting for… I bet you see some by the end of the Christmas holidays. If you do you’ll have seen them about 15 years younger than I first did. Good luck.
Every year there are species that I ought to see and don’t and so far this is one of those years for waxwing. Swindon seems to be holding very mobile flocks which are far more mobile than I seem to be and I have even checked for the same flock that Nick Self saw when picking up my grandchildren from school (that can’t be the same school can it Nick). I now know every berry bush in my district and my wife keeps wondering why the car has a natural tendency to slow down when approaching one of these.
So today it was shopping followed by a walk in a local Country Park and ended up with one Great White Egret and no waxwing. I ought to be happy didn’t I but I like waxwing. At least you know they are like buses and suddenly will all come at once.
Bob – happy hunting!
Bob, the small flock I saw were in Calne, sorry for being misleading. There are reports of Waxwing in Chippenham though. Check the Wiltshire Ornithological Society website for latest reports of waxwing. I always do, it helps me find quite a few birds that I would probably miss otherwise. There are reports of flocks 80-100 strong around Swindon.
Nick, I had picked that up off WOS. The Grandchildren’s school is about 2 streets away from where you had the flock.
Bob, it must be the same school then. They were seen in Mill Street too, a few days later, but I haven’t seen them since. You’re welcome to contact me, click on my profile, my details are on my blog.
Have you seen the peregrine’s in the church tower?
“Findings waxwings is a matter of looking at the tops of trees”
Well I tried that and stepped into a hole the dog had excavated in a molehill in what Mrs Cobb whimsically calls “The Lawn”. Fortunately I fell on top of my thumbstick and was able to use it to for leverage and got up without assistance. I didn’t see any birds, and the bruising will no doubt go away. Eventually. Thanks for the advice.
Sorry to be late on this but I am still in a different time zone. Yesterday at the beautifully named Weaselhead Trail close to Calgary I heard a familiar call and 115 Bohemian Waxwings as they call them here flew over my head. Wonderful sight anywhere but these birds were against a splendid backdrop of snow covered Rocky Mountains.
I will never forget my first Waxwing seen in a Suffolk garden whilst doing my paper round in about 1955. I took several years to identify it as my Observers Book of British Birds did not include this species. I succeeded when obtaining my first Peterson.
Derek – great story!
I have just seen my first waxwings ever. A group of 15 or more gorged themselves on my Cotoneaster tree until every berry had been removed. On a reasonably busy road in Guildford, Surrey. I loved the fact that I could walk right up to the tree and they were not the least bit bothered. I planted the tree a couple of years ago after I moved house to attract redwings as a similar tree in my old garden used to get redwings every year around New Year. I now want to go out looking for these gorgeous birds.
Jane – how wonderful. Enough to brighten up any day in Guildford! Congratulations!