planetLOVE: cedar waxwings

One of my favourite things about spring is when the cedar waxwings come to visit.  I love watching them swarm over the treetops and housetops.  It's pure chance if they happen to choose YOUR yard to visit when you happen to be around, and happen to have your new handy-dandy 200mm f2.8 handy...

The sound of them flying so nearby is a low hum, peppered with tweets and chirps in a succession of downward trills.

They fly around in droves, landing in clumps to feed and drink, hundreds of pairs of thrumming wings, swooping about then descending in a cloud.

They are flying around in search of food, preferably last year's mountain ash berries, which ferment and make the birds a little drunk - on more than one occasion we've had a tipsy one smack into our window, startling us all until we figure out what it is.  Luckily, they are usually flying slow enough that all they require is a bit of a catnap to sleep it off before they regain consciousness and take off to find their friends.  Unfortunately, some of them will hit the window so hard they will snap their neck and we'll have to go remove a little bird body from our flower bed.

If you've never witnessed the waxwing phenomena before, I really hope you are lucky enough to at least once in your lifetime.  It really is something else.

They only hung around my yard for about 10 minutes before flying off like a herd of black flies.  I was just lucky this time.