On Saturday, January 20, 2023, a friend and I were birding the Fredericton area. After visiting a very productive feeder area we visited the Mactaquac Dam, then the lagoons and water treatment plant. While driving through downtown Fredericton we were watching for waxwings but were unsuccessful. We finished our outing at the Agricultural Experimental Farm and then I received an email with a movie attached. Waxwings! Many, many waxwings!
Bohemian Waxwings are winter visitors that travel around our area in small to large flocks feasting on fruits usually still on the trees and bushes, apples, crab apples, cherries, cranberries, wild grapes, etc. It is obvious when a flock is near because you can hear their cheerful voices as they feed. They make a high trilling zeee. With many birds singing at once it makes a beautiful sound. So far this year I have seen a flock of 40 individuals and have received a report of 100 here in Douglas. But that is nothing compared to what I am about to show you! The following video was recorded by a veterinarian friend who was attracted to the beautiful singing and the size of the flock which was feeding near York Street on January 20. I don't know how we missed them.
It is common for Bohemian Waxwings to winter in flocks. There must be advantages to the birds to remain in flocks, probably for safety and finding food. Presumably the flocks have a hierarchy with some watching for predators and some with the experience to locate food sources. The amazing thing about this flock is its size. At first I estimated 400-500 birds but that was very inaccurate. I stopped the video and roughly counted the birds in patches and came up with over 1400 birds! That is a huge flock! I have never seen a flock of Bohemian Waxwings that large. It must make finding enough food for all a very difficult task. What it would certainly do is remove all the food from that particular area before the flock left. See below a photo of an area where a different flock of Bohemians were feeding and notice all the fragments of fruit on the ground, dropped by the feeding birds.
The red 'appendages' on the wing feathers of Bohemian Waxwings look like wax and give the group its name. These scarlet red and yellow appendages are located on the tips of the secondary wing feathers. They are flattened ends of the feather shafts and are pigmented with astaxanthin and enclosed in a transparent sheath. They don't usually appear on the adult bird until it is 3 years old. They certainly are pretty and unique. See a closeup of the waxy appendages in the photo below.
For information on the life history of Bohemian Waxwings and other information, please search this blog for more posts using 'Bohemian Waxwing' as your search item.
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