It doesn’t look as though this will be a Waxwing winter as numbers seen around the country so far are very low. And the first indications of an invasion are usually large flocks, by this date, in Shetland, eastern Scotland, the northeast of England and East Anglia. Maybe next year?
But after looking at this very classy photograph of a Waxwing taken in Keswick in December 2019 by T. Marsh, if one could tear oneself away from such a beautiful cover, this bird report (and so much more than just a bird report), is well worth a read. And then you can just keep staring at the cover wishing there were one in your garden…
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Was lucky enough to see a small flock in my local Tesco car park a few years ago.
The vast majority of people just passed by without even noticing them at all.
Some years back a bunch of these birds appeared in my small back garden. They stripped the rowan tree in minutes.
I no longer live where I used to. The new owner redesigned the garden.
That’d be a yellow-berried type of Sorbus aucuparia (normally red in the wild unselected versions) on that book cover. And thus it rekindles the memories of my one and only encounter with waxwings.