Cedar waxwings are drunken revelers of bird world
Reader Anne Bornet emailed me to say, “This year I’ve been seeing tons of cedar waxwings, which we seem to never get in our little area.”
I replied that migratory flocks of the birds are unpredictable in their choices of feeding locations. For instance, we will be inundated with flocks in our yard some years but barely get a glimpse of the birds in other years.
Cedar waxwings breed across northern Canada and parts of the northern United States. Beginning in autumn, some of the birds migrate only as far as the country’s northern tier for the winter, while others push farther south through Texas and into Mexico.
Their northbound return trip usually brings them to the Houston area from late December through early April. Migratory flocks tend to follow the ripening of wild berries.
But the flocks are quintessential vagabonds, wandering from neighborhood to neighborhood where they deign to devour berries in bushes or trees. We’ve seen flocks chowing down berries in our yaupon bush, much to the dismay of a lone mockingbird trying in vain to defend its staked-out berry bush.
Cedar waxwings make up for their wandering ways by being knockdown handsome. They have a dashing black mask over their face and an erect crest, like that of a cardinal. Their plumage seems woven from silk and imbued with varying shades of brown, gray, yellow and white. Waxy bright red feathers accent the
wings, hence the name waxwings.
Dapper yellow bands border the tips of their tails, but Bornet wondered why some birds had red tail bands.
It is probably the result of diet.
Although the birds were named for their diet of cedar berries, they actually eat other native sugary fruits. They’ve also been devouring nonnative honeysuckle fruits that lack sufficient carotenoids to produce yellow bands on their tails.
The birds will often get drunk from ethanol in fermented yaupon berries and then flail on the ground like drunken revelers. But their outsized livers can detoxify the ethanol, allowing the birds to take flight for a feeding frenzy at another berry-laden yaupon bush.
Aside from being wonderfully photogenic, the birds are prolific poopers. Their digestive system processes nutrients from fruits and eventually excretes seeds embedded in gooey globs deposited on cars and driveways — not to mention people’s heads.