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Re: Anyone seen waxwings in the Peidmont yet?



Just this morning we saw a small flock of about 8 cedar waxwings at Big
Woods Road.  They flew overhead and then perched briefly in a dead tree.

Cindy Hinnant
shaz@mindspring.com
Apex, NC

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
To: carolinabirds@duke.edu <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 14, 1999 5:42 PM
Subject: Anyone seen waxwings in the Peidmont yet?


>Hi C-birders,
>
>I was working outside today, alternating between reading my new favorite
>book and watching lots of American Robins visit some kind of fruiting
>tree overhead. It then occurred to me that Cedar Waxwings should be doing
>similar things by around now, but scanning the recent posts to
>Carolinabirds, I only see them mentioned by folks in the foothills like
>Tom Lorenzin and Dwayne and Lori Martin; nothing further east/downhill.
>I've been out about once a week lately, more if you count loitering in my
>backyard, and spent yesterday trail-cutting in the new Johnston Mill
>Nature Preserve, but have not seen or heard a one. It seems strange to be
>reading reports from the Piedmont of Red-breasted Nuthatch, Purple Finch,
>Pine Siskin, and on the coast Snow Bunting; and to read the Massachusetts
>RBA reporting Hoary Redpoll, Boreal Chickadee, and *Bohemian* Waxwing
>(with only ten days left until I fly home for Thanksgiving, oh boy oh
>boy!); but to see no mention of one of the most reliable and consistent
>winter birds for this area. Or perhaps my having lived here for only two
>and a half years is coloring my impression of just how consistent they
>are. The CHBC Checklist for the Triangle lists them as becoming "common"
>by the last week in October. Is it just me, or are the CEWAs behind
>schedule?
>
>The other noteworthy observation today was that, in the midst of the
>chickadees visiting my sunflower feeder today, I distinctly heard one
>give a two-note "fee-bee" song. I know, they don't get below 4000 feet in
>NC, and the Carolina Chickadee can imitate the Black-cap's song, and the
>two can hybridize, and Black-capped Chickadee is not even on the Triangle
>checklist. Yet somehow, this knowledge could not prevent me from very
>closely examining the bib and secondaries and relative body size of every
>chickadee that visited the feeder for the rest of the morning...
>
>Ever the optimist,
>
>Josh
>
>
>
>Joshua S. Rose
>Duke University
>Department of Zoology
>
>jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
>http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/
>
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