Waxwings

Day 193 #365DaysWild

Spring 2011. 

My photo!!!

An irruptive year for waxwings. Large numbers of these elusive continental migrants all around the city. Crested wonders of the avian world. Soft fawn. Butter-yellow along flight feathers and tail. And the eponymous glistening wax-red seal.

Such confiding birds.

Car pulled over in traffic on the way to work to admire a flock feasting on roadside berries.

Before that, in March 1996. Large flocks of waxwings decorating berry-bearing trees along main thoroughfares in the city followed by a paparazzi of birdwatchers with big optics. That wonderful silver tinkling of the birds voices collectively at roost.

An assembly in 2011, waxwings were a subject to enthuse children about nature.

Later, my office door bursts open. Red-faced. Megan (8) shouting at me ‘There’s waxwings, there’s waxwings!’

And there were. They’d arrived in the school grounds. 

Twelve years later, the first irruption since 2011.

Then January 2024. Waxwings at Hassop, Derbyshire.

The spirits lifted!