BOHEMIAN WAXWING 71 



Other vegetable foods of the Bohemian waxwing include highbush 

 cranberries, buli'aloberries, bearberries, blueberries, wolfberries, snow- 

 berries, hackberries, barberries, and the berries of the black alder, 

 American holly, madrona, buckthorn, ivy, asparagus, smilax, kinni- 

 kinnick, bittersweet vine, mistletoe, peppertree, dogwood, sumac, 

 laurel, woodbine and the matrimony vine, and doubtless other berries. 

 They also eat frozen apples that hang on the trees or fall to the ground, 

 Russian olives and wild olives, rose hips, wild grapes, persimmons, and 

 figs. They will come to the feeding stations for raisins, dried currants, 

 or minced prunes, and probably for other kinds of dried fruits or 

 berries. They are said to eat the buds of poplars and the seeds of 

 boxelder, black birch, locust, and hollyhock. 



Bohemian waxwings are voracious, almost gluttonous feeders ; they 

 gorge themselves with all the food their crops will hold, then fly 

 down and take a drink of water or snow and return to the feast ; when 

 filled to capacity they fly up into a tree and sit quietly to digest their 

 food, so as to be ready to fly down and eat more. They swoop down 

 in flocks onto the berry-bearing trees or shrubs and keep almost con- 

 stantly at it until the supply is exhausted. 



Dr. Harrison F. Lewis has sent me the following note on a flock 

 that he watched near Quebec City, on February 22, 1920 : "At this point 

 two fields were partly separated by a rugged row of thorn bushes 

 {Crataegus) of considerable size, on which hung much frozen fruit. 

 Among these bushes and rising high above them stood three or four 

 tall spruce trees. Some of the waxwings were in the spruces, some were 

 in the bushes, and some were on the wind-packed snow beneath. There 

 was much activity, and birds were continually flying back and forth 

 between trees, bushes, and snow. I was able to reach a position among 

 the bushes, at the foot of one of the spruce trees, without disturbing 

 the flock much. I could then see plainly that the waxwings were feed- 

 ing on the frozen fruit of the thorn bushes, for they would come un- 

 concernedly to within about two rods of me while they were feeding. 

 They swallowed the fruits whole but did so with great difficulty. It 

 seemed as if a bird made five or six unsuccessful attempts to swallow 

 a fruit for every one successful attempt. After failing in one or two 

 attempts to swallow a particular fruit, a bird would drop it and try 

 another, then perhaps drop that and try a third one, and so on. The 

 birds working in the bushes apparently dropped most of the fruit 

 which they pulled from the twigs, but these fallen fruits were immedi- 

 ately mouthed over and some of them finally swallowed by the birds on 

 the surface of the snow. Sometimes the birds, with fruit in their 

 mouths, flew up into the spruces to swallow what they had secured." 



Behavior. — The Bohemian waxwing is a w^ell-behaved bird with a 

 gentle and inoffensive disposition, sociable and friendly among its 

 fellows and not hostile toward other species, even in competition for 



