Colourful crew stand out in crowd
AUTUMN is a most colourful time of the year as leaves turn wonderful shades, making a walk in the woods a delight.
And it’s also the time of year when we welcome one of our most colourful visitors from overseas.
No borders will stop the waxwings flying over.
The majority of these delightful birds come in from Iceland or Scandinavia and Northern Russia.
They breed in spruce and pine trees and feed on insects.
In winter, when the insects have shivered off, berries feed the waxwing, so, in really harsh winters, they will cross the North Sea and head for the UK.
Of course, you will have seen many retail parks using berry bushes to brighten things up for Christmas shoppers and these attract waxwings.
It is an amazing sight to see dozens of these wonderful birds while you are staggering back, laden with presents from Toys at Home or, in my case, Pets R Us or something.
While there have been ‘irruption’ years with thousands of birds in the UK, they do now come over in less harsh years for a feed. The best years in the North West have seen flocks of 200 plus in Liverpool and Preston, 180 in Burnley and more than 100 in St Helens and Chorley.
It has been suggested that we have more than 1,000 waxwings in the North West in the winter of 2010.
The waxwing is about the size of a starling but actually resembles a parrot because of its colours.
It has a pink crest and breast, a black mask and throat, a grey rump, a black tail that is tipped with bright yellow and yellow-and-white markings on its wings.
Pink, grey, yellow and black?
Are these good colour combinations, well they certainly make waxwings stand out from many of our winter birds – which are beautiful in their own way.
In fact, waxwings are becoming more and more common in winter so don’t be surprised to see them replacing our native robin on the odd Christmas card. You won’t miss them if they are around because they do hang around in gangs.
You can even entice them to your garden with rowan and hawthorn berries on your bushes and they will go for apples hung from trees.
And eating berries can make birds a little intoxicated so you may hear a rowdy group of lapwings in your garden or retail park car park this winter.
The winter migrations add so much to the wonderful fabric of our nature in Lancashire.
So get your cameras at the ready in case you are lucky enough to encounter a museum of waxwings.