Bold beauties fly in for feast
Black Friday shopping mania arrives this week with birdwatchers ready to enjoy their own exciting brand of retail therapy.
Hard as it seems, those unprepossessing out of town malls and supermarkets jam-packed with bargain-hunters are also great places to swoon over one of our most beautiful birds.
Bohemian waxwings certainly look like they have just stepped out of a high-end fashion department store. Velvety pinktipped secondary feathers, black eye masks, yellow-tipped tails and fancy crests that could be a homage to the creative genius of Vivienne Westwood.
Berry bushes and ornamental trees planted to brighten up shopping centre car parks act as magnets for waxwings as they search out their winter diet.
In summer, they are adept insect eaters in the mosquito-rich northern forests that stretch from Scandinavia to the easternmost edges of Siberia.
Come winter, their digestive systems adapt to a diet of fruit that is consumed in huge proportions. As an example of a waxwing’s appetite, one bird was counted gobbling 390 cotoneaster berries – roughly its own bodyweight – in 150 minutes.
Every few years, berry crop failures in northern climes see waxwings perform what is known as an irruption – a mass exodus to find food outside their normal wintering range.
So-called Waxwing Winters are few and far between in the UK, the last ones of any note being in 2012/13 and 2016/17, when 9,750 and 11,500 birds arrived here respectively. With 4,000 birds counted already this year, it augurs well for another large influx and an opportunity to marvel over these flying wonders.
Since spotting my first waxwing many years ago at the RSPB’S reserve at Snettisham, I have been lucky to appreciate these beautiful birds in some remarkable places.
Certainly the most atmospheric views were of waxwings hawking for insects under the midnight sun in Arctic Finland. Other less romantic spots have been garage forecourts, retirement homes and the car parks of several high street food stores. I await one in the garden with fingers crossed.
‘‘ One bird was seen gobbling its own body weight in berries