(_Ampelis cedrorum_) Waxwing family
_Called also_: CEDAR WAXWING; CHERRY-BIRD; CANADA ROBIN;
RA%COLLET
(Illustration facing p. 158)
_Length_--7 to 8 inches. About one-fifth smaller than the
robin.
_Male_--Upper parts rich grayish brown, with plum-colored
tints showing through the brown on crest, throat, breast,
wings, and tail. A velvety-black line on forehead runs through
the eye and back of crest. Chin black; crest conspicuous;
breast lighter than the back, and shading into yellow
underneath. Wings have quill-shafts of secondaries elongated,
and with brilliant vermilion tips like drops of sealing-wax,
rarely seen on tail quills, which have yellow bands across the
end.
_Female_--With duller plumage, smaller crest, and narrower
tail-band.
_Range_--North America, from northern British provinces to
Central America in winter.
_Migrations_--A roving resident, without fixed seasons for
migrating.
As the cedar birds travel about in great flocks that quickly exhaust
their special food in a neighborhood, they necessarily lead a nomadic
life--here to-day, gone to-morrow--and, like the Arabs, they "silently
steal away." It is surprising how very little noise so great a company
of these birds make at any time. That is because they are singularly
gentle and refined; soft of voice, as they are of color, their plumage
suggesting a fine Japanese water-color painting on silk, with its
beautiful sheen and exquisitely blended tints.
One listens in vain for a song; only a lisping "_Twee-twee-ze_," or "a
dreary whisper," as Minot calls their low-toned communications with
each other, reaches our ears from their high perches in the cedar
trees, where they sit, almost motionless hours at a time, digesting
the enormous quantities of juniper and whortle berries, wild
cherries, worms, and insects upon which they have gormandized.
Nuttall gives the cedar birds credit for excessive politeness to each
other. He says he has often seen them passing a worm from one to
another down a whole row of beaks and back again before it was finally
eaten.
When nesting time arrives--that is to say, towards the end of the
summer--they give up their gregarious habits and live in pairs,
billing and kissing like turtle-doves in the orchard or wild
crab-trees, where a flat, bulky nest is rather carelessly built of
twigs, grasses, feathers, strings--any odds and ends that may be lying
about. The eggs are usually four, white tinged with purple and spotted
with black.
Apparently they have no moulting season; their plumage is always the
same, beautifully neat and full-feathered. Nothing ever hurries or
flusters them, their greatest concern apparently being, when they
alight, to settle themselves comfortably between their over-polite
friends, who are never guilty of jolting or crowding. Few birds care
to take life so easily, not to say indolently.
Among the French Canadians they are called RA(C)collet, from the color of
their crest resembling the hood of the religious order of that name.
Every region the birds pass through, local names appear to be applied
to them, a few of the most common of which are given above.
Of the three waxwings known to scientists, two are found in America,
and the third in Japan.