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Bohemian Waxwings – Exquisite Winter Visitors
Watch for these occasional winter visitors in your orchard!
© Keith Williams CC
It's winter, and apples litter the ground. A few still hang, frozen and thawed again and again. Suddenly a flock of hundreds of birds rises from the ground beneath the trees, swarming in tight formation, wing-tip to wing-tip. Bohemian Waxwings are erratic winter visitors from their nesting grounds in the boreal forests of the north. They come in search of fruit to sustain their winter wanderings.
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Bohemian Waxwings – Exquisite Winter Visitors
Written by Bob Sundstrom
Mary McCann: This is BirdNote!
A light dusting of snow whitens the hillsides along the Columbia River, a quiet backdrop to scores of apple orchards. Most of the fruit was harvested in autumn, but apples litter the ground, and a few still hang, frozen and thawed again and again.
Suddenly a flock of hundreds of birds rises from the ground beneath the apple trees, swarming in tight formation, wing-tip to wing-tip.
[Wing sounds]
The flock lifts and perches in orderly ranks, in the top of a nearby poplar.
[Buzzing/trilling notes of a flock of Bohemian Waxwings]
These are Bohemian Waxwings, occasional visitors during the winter, down from their nesting grounds in the boreal forests of the north. They’re nomads, come in search of fruit to sustain their winter wanderings.
Bohemian Waxwings, larger kin of Cedar Waxwings, are exquisite, with silken-plumage, a jaunty crest, black mask, and wings daubed as if with sealing wax in red, yellow, white, and black. Add to this a tail dipped in yellow, and you have a bird that seems to have sprung from a painter’s palette.
Quickly the flock is off again...
[Wing sounds]
...swirling up the canyon to adorn the winter branches of another orchard.
[Buzzing of the Bohemian Waxwings]
For BirdNote, I'm Mary McCann.
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Call of the Bohemian Waxwing provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by W.W.H. Gunn
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2015 Tune In to Nature.org January 2017/2019/2021/2024
Narrator: Mary McCann
ID#011906BOWAKPLU BOWA-01b
Bob Sundstrom
Writer
Mary McCann
NarratorSights & Sounds
