Will they? Won’t they? The boisterous waxwing sometimes migrates here
The waxwing is a rare winter treat. With a magnificent crest, a liberal dose of dark eyeliner and dazzlingly bright flashes of yellow, it’s one of the most beautiful and exotic birds to grace our shores.
The name comes from the crimson tips on a small cluster of wing feathers, which look like drops of red sealing wax. Bizarrely, these brightly-coloured little birds were once credited with an incredible superpower, and for nearly two thousand years people believed that waxwings could glow in the dark.
The ‘flames’ on their wings were said to shine so brilliantly that caged birds could be used as lanterns to navigate the vast and ancient Hercynian forest of Germany at night.
It wasn’t until the late 1500s that an enterprising ornithologist managed to keep a waxwing captive for three months to study its nocturnal activities – and he didn’t observe a single shimmer.
Waxwings live and breed in the dense forest wilderness of Scandinavia and Russia, where they rely on berries to see them through the winter.
Each bird will gobble twice its own body weight – up to 1,000 berries – in a single day. Rowan is their favourite but in some years, a good nesting season combined with a poor rowan crop can result in a sudden mass migration of hungry waxwings flying south-west through Europe in search of food.
Some will eventually make it as far as Britain, and occasionally as far south as Sussex. Their arrival is erratic and unpredictable but the possibility of a waxwing winter is always eagerly anticipated.
Will they? Won’t they? In some special years they arrive in exceptionally high numbers, a welcome invasion from the north that’s known as an irruption.
This is enough to grab anyone’s attention as thousands of noisy, colourful birds strip berries from trees like feathered piranhas, swarming through supermarket car parks, industrial estates, parks and gardens.
They’ll feast on berries wherever they can be found, rapidly depleting one allyou-can-eat buffet before moving on to the next. Maybe this year we’ll be lucky and a flock of these boisterous bohemian nomads will swoop in to brighten a winter’s day. department is risible to say the very least
– I once boldly proclaimed on regional radio that the then newly elected mayor of London, a one Boris Johnson, would never become Prime Minister as he wasn’t serious enough to hold such high office. I was half right I suppose.
I have also been in the room when truly daft predictions were made, including corkers such as ‘this Interweb thing will never catch on’.
Quite frankly, after the year we’ve just had, making predictions of any kind is particularly foolish, unless it is that millions of us will be eating turkey and cheese with cranberries in until Valentine’s Day.
The aforementioned Mr Johnson has done his best to peer into his crystal ball with perhaps his most memorable prophecy being that we could return to normal by Christmas.
If you really are hellbent on making a 2021 forecast then you won’t go far wrong with telling anyone who will listen that both coronavirus and Brexit will dominate the headlines for most of the year.
It would also be a fair shout to forecast that there will be lots of ‘we told you so’ from angry people on both side of the great Brexit debate with neither side coming close to conceding that they were wrong.
Neither should we be surprised to hear news items featuring greengrocers claiming they cannot easily get their hands on Sevilles and Golden Delicious while ruddy-cheeked men in bad ties dismiss it as yet another scare story from Project Fear. Brexit will be an argument that nobody will ever win unanimously. The same can be said for coronavirus and I think I can safely predict that in the coming months Facebook will be full of defiant posts from armchair sages justifying why they won’t be taking the vaccine, even though their only experience in the field of medicine is watching daytime repeats of Quincy in the 90s.
Then there will be those who will fill their timelines with well thought out images of their latest pastry invention, designed to serve as proof that rather than sitting in their pants and watch boxsets, they have used their time since March wisely.
On a personal note I will happily predict that it will be a long time until I ever manage to squeeze into the rather sharp suit Mrs Tapp bought me in the post-Christmas sales 12 months ago. My excuse being that there isn’t much call for a suit these days.
When it comes down to it, professional know-it-alls won’t take a blind bit of notice about what I have to say and will continue to make their 2021 predictions in the coming days. One thing is for certain is that they will most certainly be wrong as next year promises to be eventful as the one we have just endured.