(_Ampelis garrulus_) Waxwing family
_Called also_: BLACK-THROATED WAXWING; LAPLAND WAXWING;
SILKTAIL
_Length_--8 to 9.5 inches. A little smaller than the robin.
_Male and Female_--General color drab, with faint brownish
wash above, shading into lighter gray below. Crest
conspicuous, being nearly an inch and a half in length;
rufous at the base, shading into light gray above.
Velvety-black forehead, chin, and line through the eye. Wings
grayish brown, with very dark quills, which have two white
bars; the bar at the edge of the upper wing coverts being
tipped with red sealing-wax-like points, that give the bird
its name. A few wing feathers tipped with yellow on outer
edge. Tail quills dark brown, with yellow band across the end,
and faint red streaks on upper and inner sides.
_Range_--Northern United States and British America. Most
common in Canada and northern Mississippi region.
_Migrations_--Very irregular winter visitor.
When Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, who was the first to count
this common waxwing of Europe and Asia among the birds of North
America, published an account of it in his "Synopsis," it was
considered a very rare bird indeed. It may be these waxwings have
greatly increased, but however uncommon they may still be considered,
certainly no one who had ever seen a flock containing more than a
thousand of them, resting on the trees of a lawn within sight of New
York City, as the writer has done, could be expected to consider the
birds "very rare."
The Bohemian waxwing, like the only other member of the family that
ever visits us, the cedar-bird, is a roving gipsy. In Germany they say
seven years must elapse between its visitations, which the
superstitious old cronies are wont to associate with woful stories of
pestilence--just such tales as are resurrected from the depths of
morbid memories here when a comet reappears or the seven-year locust
ascends from the ground.
The goings and comings of these birds are certainly most erratic and
infrequent; nevertheless, when hunger drives them from the far north
to feast upon the juniper and other winter berries of our Northern
States, they come in enormous flocks, making up in quantity what they
lack in regularity of visits and evenness of distribution.
Surely no bird has less right to be associated with evil than this
mild waxwing. It seems the very incarnation of peace and harmony. Part
of a flock that has lodged in a tree will sit almost motionless for
hours and whisper in softly hissed twitterings, very much as a company
of Quaker ladies, similarly dressed, might sit at yearly meeting.
Exquisitely clothed in silky-gray feathers that no berry juice is ever
permitted to stain, they are dainty, gentle, aristocratic-looking
birds, a trifle heavy and indolent, perhaps, when walking on the
ground or perching; but as they fly in compact squads just above the
tree-tops their flight is exceedingly swift and graceful.