The highlight of my day today? Seeing birds I’ve never seen before, and knowing exactly what they were when I zoomed in with my camera. Now these shots are horrible, but I consider I was excited, they are sorta on the small side and they were perched high in the poplar tree out back. These are a loving pair of Cedar Waxwings – both male and female flirted together at the top of this tree while I stood watching, amazed that we even have them around here.
Two separate photos, merged together and tweaked for sharpness, shadows and color. Really – you have to see them in person to appreciate how sleek they appear. Makes me want to go plant a mulberry bush right next to the Grand Central Feeding Station!
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A huge flock of Waxwings visit us every spring–they LOVE our loquat tree, and tend to get a bit tipsy on the overripe fruit at the top.
This year, the flock was so huge and thick, and I think the fruit a lot overripe, they kept flying into the windows–BAM! BAM!–and would bounce off and fly back to the tree to eat more LOL It was crazy!
I got some pictures and video, kept meaning to post them. Your photo is lovely of course 🙂
Awesome. Lucky, you know how to identify birds. I have, another, seagull posted today. I see mostly seagulls, crows and ducks around here. But, I hear a lot of other birds singing. Thought I was gonna lose my mind early sunday morning. All I heard was a high chirp, chirp, chirp chiiirrrpppp.
Wonderful photo! I love waxwings! They don’t come here very often, in fact I’ve only seen them one year, but that year there were loads of them, and they are wonderful birds as they flutter together in a mass of red and yellow shimmers. Ours are a different species to yours I think.
Leanne, this is the first time I’ve seen the Grand Central Feeding Station (love that name), and I saved the pic to show my hub. What a great idea! I don’t know how I missed the original post but I really liked the design.
I’ve never seen a waxwing before, and that pic was really pretty. I especially liked the way you merged the top left photo so that the branch blurs out softly and merges with the right pic.
gorgeous!
Angel – your pics were amazing, thanks for sharing! I can’t even imagine seeing that many in one place – I need me a fruit tree!
:growit:
Nancy – it all starts out with a chirp – and trying to track down the source – then getting it on film (memory) and going to bdi.org to identify it. I’ve seen and admired waxwing photos enough to know what they were on sight. It’s easier to locate newbies when you’re used to certain birds and they’re all comfortable and predictable by sight and sound. 🙂
Crafty – I understand that there are some with orange tips on their tailfeathers – this is from eating a special variety of honeysuckle (my mom passed on a link to that info). You may have waxwings of that variety. :gardener:
Laura – thank you! I’m glad you enjoy our GCFS – I’ll keep my eyes peeled for your version (you are going to have hubby get right to work on that, right?) 😉
[…] and returned so that they could see it. I have only spotted a real live cedar waxwing once, and got a pretty mediocre photo of the pair – but today, today I saw dozens of them flitting about, hanging upside down from branches to reach […]
Hi Leanne, I dont know if we have waxwings here in Australia? your pictues are jsut gorgeous. Well done on being able to capture them on film.
Cheers Debra (Australia)
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