 Wax Fruit As they have in winters gone by, large flocks of Bohemian Waxwings once again descend on our town. And whether or not you take a keen interest in bird activities, it’s hard to ignore the antics of the Waxwings as they strip fruit from the ornamental trees which proliferate along many streets in 100 Mile House. I receive daily comments about the Waxwings. Some wonder if the birds are actually Cedar Waxwings, and cite a close examination of the colouration. Others simply describe a reddish brown bird with a pointy head and ask me what kind of bird it is. For a minute I am confounded despite seeing the flocks of Bohemians every time I’m in town. Visions of Cardinals jump to my mind causing a temporary reverie in which scarlet birds leer from Christmas cards and flash brightly in the snow laden boughs of evergreen trees or sit hunched near overstuffed letter boxes along snow covered country lanes. More than a few people say that the birds are getting drunk on the fruit and acting like bohemians, sparking yet another Christmas vision in my mind. This notion of drunken birds is an antic that I have never seen myself though I’ve read about it many times. To those lucky few who pause after describing an encounter with the Bohemian Waxwings, I run through a gamut of observations about bird field marks, and how the Cedar Waxwing, a close relative of the Bohemian, is probably lolling about right now in a much warmer spot such as California. It’s kind of like a time share arrangement. The Cedar Waxwings leave 100 Mile House and travel south to a warmer climate, while the Bohemian flocks leave their nesting areas in the far north and travel south to fill the Waxwing void in our area. Some late departing Cedars are still seen around town in September, but by late October it is a sure bet that any Waxwings are the robust Bohemian. In spring the reverse happens, the Cedars move north to nest in 100 Mile House while the Bohemians leave to seek nesting areas in the far north of BC. Yesterday I paused in front of the town library and watched a small flock of Bohemians work the remaining fruit from a tree. I wanted to study the wing details. The males of both waxwing species have tiny red droplets that tip the secondary feathers, (and give this family of birds its name,) but the Bohemian wing pattern is much more complicated. (I attempted to paint a Bohemian from memory a few days earlier. This reminded me that I had forgotten the precise detail and colour.) The feeding flock was deceptively tame. They watched me carefully but allowed me to stand nearby while they ate. I could now see the tips of the primaries were white. There was also white at the base of the primaries in the alula area, and each primary feather had a yellow leading edge, and a delineation of white around the tip. Thus reeducated I strolled away armed with even more information to heap upon the next unsuspecting person who mentions the roving bands of Bohemians. Mirror, Mirror A trip to the dump several months ago netted me a perfectly good large concave mirror, about a meter across, which I refer to as a shoplifting mirror. I couldn’t envision a need for such a device around the house but I couldn’t pass it up since it came with the hardware necessary to mount it. Luckily a late-to-hibernate black bear gave me a reason to utilize my find. Despite the black bear paying occasional visits to the bird feeders, I wanted to continue feeding birds, so it became necessary to modify my feeder presentation. Suet is particularly tantalizing and requires special tactics. Along with a smaller suet feeder, which I bring in every night, I placed a large suet cage high up in a poplar tree. Rather than shinny up a Poplar, or fir, I made a pole from the trunk of a full length spindly tree and attached a wire hook. I slipped the hook into the suet cage and wrestled the pole into a vertical position. With the whole contraption waving around high over my head, I managed to hang the feeder on a sturdy poplar limb. This tactic failed once before when a black bear simply climbed the tree and snapped off the appropriate limb so the whole feeder filled with sunflower seeds, crashed to the ground. This time I hung the suet feeder on a very sturdy limb. As I assessed my work I realized there was no way to see the feeder from inside the house because the porch roof blocked the view. I like to watch my feeders so this situation had to be remedied. There were no other suitable trees on which to hang the suet basket, I needed a way to see around corners, and that’s when I thought of the shoplifting mirror. I mounted the mirror on a two foot by four foot structure attached to the woodshed. And after much mirror adjusting I could finally see the feeder from the side window of the house. Unfortunately, it was necessary to mount the mirror 40 feet from the window, so I need to use binoculars to see the reflection of the suet cage. But it works. With the naked eye I can watch a bird perch on the south side of the suet cage, and with binoculars I can make a positive identification. An over-wintering Flicker and a visiting Pileated Woodpecker both enjoy this high flying suet cage. But still there is some difficulty when a bird perches on the north side of the suet feeder. Perhaps I need another mirror… To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
