Cedar Waxwings

Recently, a flock of Cedar Waxwings spent a few days in my backyard and it was the perfect opportunity to capture a few images of these handsome birds and to study some of their behaviors. There are few birds that I see where I live that are as striking as these birds with there black masked eye bands and beautiful coloured plumage. For years I have heard their high pitched peeping type calls and occasionally had them stop by to drink from my backyard water station but never before had I had the entire flock enter my yard yet alone have them exclusively spend a few days in my backyard trees and water station. To my astonishment I discovered that a flock (at least 70 birds) of Cedar Waxwings, although they each take small amounts of water at a time, can pretty much drain a water station quickly. I therefore was required to replace and refill the water to the brim at least three times per day.

Cedar Waxwings are very skittish and will bolt away very quickly. Viewing them from my deck and deck chair I spent hours letting them get used to me and my Nikon D850 camera. After some time the flock and individual Cedar Waxwings, I believe, realized that I presented no threat to them (or any birds that enter my yard yard) and relaxed with my presence. In fact when the water in the water station was low, I would go to it and the Cedar Waxwings would simply fly to the nearest trees while I drained, rinsed and refilled to over-flowing. Once I reeled in the garden hose I used and returned to my deck chair and camera they returned to the water within minutes.

Cedar Waxwings 1

Among some of their behaviors I observed are:

They come to water usually in pairs or small groups.

They seem to come to water in small groups (families?) and occasional swarms.

Cedar Waxwings became territorial with the water station. When other small birds such as Black Capped Chickadees, Sparrows and up to and including American Robins came to the water station, the Cedar Waxwings came to the water station in increasingly overwhelming numbers and intimidating the other birds to leave.

Cedar Waxwings have an intentional shuffling movement in towards the “personal space” of other small birds at a water station in order to crowd them out and forcing them to leave the water station.

I had a blast spending time with these wonderful birds and ended up taking a few hundred images of them. I know that many photographers have taken images of these birds but I hope that you will like the ones I posted here and in my Birds gallery. If you like this post or the images on my website please take the time to Subscribe to my to website. Once I have enough people subscribed I am planning to start giving away digital copies of some of my images in the future.

Cedar Waxwings 2

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