Cedar Waxwings at Fort Bragg.
A new bird pic from our soon-to-be-again Iraqi avifaunalist, LTC Bob.
Larger version here.
They’re just passing through on their way north.
Over most of North America, the Cedar Waxwing is the most specialized fruit-eating bird. This bird’s primary foods are fleshy fruits that are high in sugar content. Like tropical birds with this diet, Cedar Waxwings are social all year long, they nest in loose clusters, and at times they wander widely in flocks in search of temporarily abundant sources of fruit. Because of their reliance on summer ripening fruit for feeding their hatchlings, they are among the latest birds to nest in North America.
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In the East, forest regeneration and the planting of fruit-bearing ornamentals and crops has led to large increases in Cedar Waxwing populations. From 1965 to 1979, the population doubled. The changing diet of Cedar Waxwings brought about an interesting effect: the appearance of orange, rather than yellow, terminal bands on the tail, a characteristic not noted before 1950. This color change is attributed to pigments contained in the fruit of the alien honeysuckle Lonicera morrowii, a recent addition to the Cedar Waxwing diet.