46 Cameron, Birds of Custer & Dawson Counties, Mont. \f^^ 



rises in Custer County, but runs into the Yellowstone in Dawson County) 

 I had daily opportunities of observing thousands of Waxwings which 

 frequented the extensive thickets surrounding my camp. Here they sub- 

 sisted entirely on cedar berries, which have a sweet taste and tinge the 

 excrement of the birds red, so that familiar roosting places in the high 

 pines are infallibly marked by the red-stained snow beneath. In general 

 the winter food of Waxwings consists of cedar berries, buffalo berries, and 

 wild rose hips, in this respect entirely coinciding with that of Sharp-tailed 

 Grouse wliich are also very numerous in these woods. The latter birds 

 were a great nuisance to me when still-hunting deer, for, although the 

 complacent Waxwings never gave the alarm, the Grouse, when disturbed, 

 flew into the trees in a spray of snow and with a most unnerving cackle — • 

 a signal for all the deer within ear shot to "quit the country." When 

 following a fresh deer trail a flock of Waxwings would shoot over an open- 

 ing but a few feet above my head, and alight, despite my presence, to 

 pick off the berries near at hand. On these occasions I have seen the old 

 birds feed the young ones as late as the end of January. The loud rushing 

 noise of their wings swept through the silent cedars with a familiar and 

 welcome sound which the deer were unaccustomed to associate with 

 danger. As these Waxwings had no fear of man, their perplexing plumage 

 could be examined at very close range. Only a small proportion had yel- 

 low primary bands; in the great majority these were white. Most birds 

 had no red sealing wax appendages visible and were presumably the 

 young of the year. Others, besides showing white edging to the ends of 

 all the primaries except the two first, had four wax tips on the secondaries. 

 These may have been birds of eighteen months old which had moulted 

 twice, ha\dng regard to the fact that the Waxwing moults only once a 

 year — in October. A few of the birds had brilliant yellow wing-bars 

 and numerous vermilion appendages, and I concluded that this small 

 minority were old birds. "The fullest information on this subject is to be 

 found in a paper by the late Henry Stevenson of Norwich, published in the 

 'Transactions of the Norfolk Naturalists Society' (Vol. Ill, pp. 326-344).. 

 He dissected sixty-eight specimens of the Waxwing — forty-one males 

 and twenty-eight females — and found that the number of waxlike tips 

 on the wing feathers is variable. Of the males examined, three had four 

 tips; seven, five; fourteen, six; fourteen, seven; and three, eight tips. 

 Of the females one had two tips; four, three; seven, four; six, five; seven, 

 six; two, seven; and one, eight tips."^ 



Waxwings, more than any other small birds here, appear to fly for the 

 mere pleasure of flying. When snow lies thick upon the branches of the 

 cedars, and is held imprisoned between the needles of the pines, while in 

 the frosty air outside long streamers of blue, red, and yellow light radiate 

 from the sun, these birds are constantly on the wing. The flock selects a 



1 Natural History Editor of London Field, Feb. 18, 1893, in reply to a corre- 

 spondent. 



