The Cedar Waxwing looks airbrushed: silky fawn-brown fading to gray, a jaunty crest, a neat black mask, a yellow-dipped tail, and the tiny red waxlike wingtips that give the bird its name. They travel Michigan in tight, whistling flocks that materialize wherever fruit is ripe, strip the tree, and vanish.
Waxwings are true nomads — their movements track fruit crops rather than a fixed migration, so a yard can host a hundred one day and none for the rest of the winter. In summer they turn flycatcher, sallying out over rivers and lakes for insects. Listen for their signature call: a thin, high "sreee" that often announces a flock before it's visible.
Fruit above all — serviceberry, cedar berries, crabapple, mountain-ash, and wild grape — swallowed whole, sometimes to the point of comic overindulgence. Insects caught on the wing round out the diet in the warm months.
Flattened, pigment-filled extensions of the secondary feather shafts. They increase in number with age and appear to function in mate choice — older, waxier birds pair with each other and nest more successfully.
Yes. Overwintered fruit can ferment, and waxwings that gorge on it become visibly intoxicated — occasionally fatally so. It's one of the few genuine cases of drunkenness in wild birds.
When your fruit is ripe and not before. Plant serviceberry, dogwood, winterberry, or crabapple and flocks will find them eventually — waxwings follow food, not calendars.
Yes, in any month. Numbers are highest from April through July. Winter is often the easiest time to find them, with bare branches, open sightlines, and snow cover concentrating birds at reliable food.
Juveniles are grayish and streaked below with a poorly defined mask and usually no red wingtips at all. The waxy red tips accumulate with age, so the oldest birds carry the most — and waxwings tend to pair with mates carrying a similar number.
Birders say flock; the traditional term is a museum of waxwings, which is folklore rather than usage. Waxwing flocks work fruiting trees together and are known for passing berries down a row of perched birds.
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