Bohemian waxwings: Intrepid winter wanderers

Walking along a dirt road last winter, I heard a collection of pleasant, sputtering trills coming from a stand of conifers and hardwoods nearby. I’m used to the winter conversation of chickadees around feeder and woods, the cawing of crows and blue jays in the yard, and the high-pitched calls of golden-crowned kinglets sounding from the trees in winter – but I didn’t recognize this sound.

Although I typically keep my phone tucked away on walks, I was glad to have it with me now. My Merlin Bird ID app told me the twittering I heard was Bohemian waxwings. A few days later, just around the corner from the spot where I’d heard them before, a huge flock—more than 100—rose from a giant white pine tree as I passed along the road, then alit in another tree and nearby snag.

I’d seen these birds before, during two different winters, when a much smaller group descended on the highbush cranberry in our yard and gobbled up all the fruit. Then, I’d mistaken the birds for their cousins, cedar waxwings. While cedar waxwings are year-round residents in most of the Northeast, Bohemians, as their name suggests, are wanderers. Typically, if they show up in winter, or any time of year, it’s because they’re on the hunt for fruit and berries that linger into the coldest season.

“As their name implies, Bohemian waxwings are among the most intrepid of the winter wanderers,” said Pamela Hunt, senior biologist for avian conservation at New Hampshire Audubon. “They show up in the Northeast irregularly—roughly every two years, but usually at least a few birds most years —and the nearest place they breed is the western edge of Hudson Bay. They’re more likely to show up here in years when fruit, especially mountain ash, is scarce in their breeding grounds.”

While many of our summer songbirds fly south for the winter, for Bohemian waxwings, the Northeast is south. This species breeds in the open evergreen and mixed forests of areas far to our north—Central Alaska, western Canada, Scandinavia, and northern Russia. Cedar and Bohemian waxwings eat fruit in winter, and both species tend to gather in flocks—sometimes with each other, along with robins and other frugivorous winter birds. Bohemians are slightly larger than cedars, but the two waxwing species exhibit similar behavior, and males and females within each species look alike. Both species have crested heads, yellow tips on their tails, and distinct black eye masks. So, how can you tell one waxwing from another? There are a few ways, but you’ll have to look closely. While cedar waxwings have yellow-hued bellies and brownish breasts, Bohemians have gray breasts and bellies with rufous coloring on the undersides of their tails. Bohemian waxwings also have distinct yellow markings on their otherwise black wings , a feature their cedar cousins do not have.

Because they don’t generally return to a specific breeding area or defend breeding territories, Bohemian waxwings don’t have a true song , only the twittering calls I heard from high in the trees last winter. Breeding pairs may form as early as January and remain monogamous through the breeding season. Without the benefit of singing, male Bohemian waxwings have other ways to make a good impression. A male will fluff up his feathers and raise and lower his crest to attract a female’s attention. Once she takes notice, he’ll pass her a bit of food. If she’s interested, she’ll pass it back, and they’ll carry on this way for a while.

“The gift isn’t always even edible,” Hunt noted, “So this is a more ritualistic than practical behavior.”

Come springtime, Bohemian waxwings will expand their diets to include sap dripping from maple or birch trees, and they’ll eat insects during the warmer months. But in winter, it’s an all-fruit diet, and they’ll eat apples, crabapples, juniper berries, mountain ash berries, and —lucky for me — highbush cranberries.

Bohemian waxwings will stay in one winter area only as long as it takes to consume the fruit there. The year they appeared in our high-bush cranberry, they stayed only a couple of days, stripping the branches of what had been a bountiful crop of berries. This winter, that broad shrub is again adorned with numerous red fruits. And I’m keeping a lookout for waxwings, both cedar and Bohemian.

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul is the editor of Northern Woodlands magazine. Illustration by Adelaide Murphy Tyrol. The Outside Story is assigned and edited by Northern Woodlands magazine and sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: nhcf.org.