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"The first one might have dropped the cherry if he couldn't eat it instead of passing it along." Just then the Waxwings flew away. It was the very middle of the summer before Peter Rabbit again saw Dandy the Waxwing. Quite by chance he discovered Dandy sitting on the tiptop of an evergreen tree, as if on guard.
Later they avenged themselves by pilfering my cherries. The most mischievous enemies of the cherries, however, here as at the North, are the cedar waxwings, or "cherry-birds." How quickly they spy out the tree! Long before the cherry begins to turn, they are around, alert and cautious.
In fact the waxwings are inclined to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress. Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if kept in a bandbox.
Now just look at that performance, will you?" There were five of the Waxwings and they were now seated side by side on a branch of the cherry tree. One of them had a plump cherry which he passed to the next one. This one passed it on to the next, and so it went to the end of the row and halfway back before it was finally eaten. Peter laughed right out.
They fly in pairs often and in the evenings they cling prettily to the catnip by the pasture fence, digging into each calyx for its four sweet nutlets. The woodthrush has a late nest in a young elm; her first family was eaten by the blue-jays just after the hatching, so were the young grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but the cedar waxwings were slain and eaten by the cannibalistic grackles.
"I crept in among the cedar trees, and there was a whole lot of rather big gray birds sitting in a row on a branch; they had black around their beaks and their head feathers stuck up in front. They didn't seem to be building nests, but were only whispering to each other." "Those were Cedar Waxwings."
Hippe's store had been closed at least an hour, and the Mino-birds and Bohemian waxwings at Mr. Pippel's had their heads tucked under their wings in their first sleep. Herr Hippe sat in his parlor, which was lit by a pleasant wood-fire. There were no candles in the room, and the flickering blaze played fantastic tricks on the pale gray walls. It seemed the festival of shadows.
My only sight of these birds was of a pair perched in an elm tree in East Orange, New Jersey; but I will never forget it, and will never cease to hope for another such red-letter day. The movements of the cedar waxwings are as uncertain in summer as they are in winter; they may be common in one locality for a year or two, and then, apparently without reason, desert it.
Waxwings are very gentle, affectionate birds; before the nesting season, and after their families are able to take care of themselves, they wander about in flocks of sometimes thirty or forty, keeping close together, both when they fly and when they take their seats.
After a delicious, appetising, and inspiring breakfast of straight Moose, without even salt, and raw tea, we pushed on along the line of least resistance, i.e., toward flour. A flock of half a dozen Bohemian Waxwings were seen catching flies among the tall spruce tops; probably all were males enjoying a stag party while their wives were home tending eggs or young.
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