Cedar Waxwings are Flycatchers?
The first time I ever saw Cedar Waxwings catch flies was this July in my Canaan, NH back yard. In the early evening, a flock of mystery birds began awkwardly leaping and tumbling from the top of a tall tree in an ungainly reproduction of flycatcher behavior.
They did this for several evenings running and eventually, I managed to have binoculars with me. I discovered that these birds looked exactly like Cedar Waxwings. I didn’t believe they were waxwings, just that they looked exactly like them. I didn’t believe these could be waxwings because Cedar Waxwings are so famous for eating fruit. Whole papers are written about their ability to spread fruit seeds. They live in large flocks and move around the US following the availability of fruit, which they swallow whole and poop out the seeds in a frenzy of fruit propagation.
So devoted to fruit are Cedar Waxwings that they don’t live anywhere. They are easentially nomadic. While you may have Cedar Waxwings year after year in your yard, it’s quite likely that they aren’t the same birds. Studies of banded Cedar Waxwings find that the birds rarely ever return to where they were banded. They go where there is fruit. Period. New Hampshire is shown to be in their year-round range, but their incidence here in winter is spotty. Still, some apparently stay to feed on their namesake cedar berries.
The first flock to first demonstrate their lack of fly-catching grace were all adults and the literature does suggest that when they are raising young, Cedar Waxwings will supplement with insects to insure enough protein for their growing brood.
The second flock, that put on a show this week, were all juveniles, most with striped breasts. These birds were born a few months ago. Where’s the adult supervision?
The literature mentions flocks of juveniles, but I didn’t really think about how weird it is that the least-experienced birds hang out together while the ones who might know something are flying around eating fruit.
The youngsters are also eating fruit like normal waxwings, but in the evening, they are going for flies.
Turns out, waxwings come by their fly-catching ways honestly. They are related to very few other birds, but among them are Phainopepla, which is a southwestern bird that is an honest-to-goodness flycatcher, not a the tumble-around-the-tops-of-trees flycatcher.
You won’t see Phainopepla in New Hampshire. You will get to see them all over Arizona, though. They look like slender black cardinals. So, of course, I always imagined they were related to cardinals, who are dedicated seed eaters. The same way Cedar Waxwings are dedicated frugivors. Why do I even bother?
I don’t know what to say about all of this except that, as I started, who knew that Cedar Waxwings were flycatchers?
It is apparently not new for me to be surprised by what Cedar Waxwings eat. A few years ago, I wrote a whole post on Cedar Waxwings eating the flowers from Cottonwood trees.
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