326 Saunders, Nesting of the Cedar Waxwing. LJuly 



seated on the ground some ten or fifteen feet away. The slew 

 movements may have been because of my presence, but I doubt it, 

 for the birds did not show anxiety or uneasiness in any other way 

 and in fact, I believe did not notice me at all, except when I was 

 actually examining the nest and its contents. In approaching the 

 nests, the birds would fly into the bush from whatever side they 

 happened to come, sit on the lower limbs for a time, then approach 

 the nest by short upward flights. After a long wait sitting on the 

 nest rim, they would feed the young by the usual method of re- 

 gurgitation, and then take another long wait before flying away. 

 Each bird always left the nest in a certain direction. The birds 

 were so regular in this that after a little observation at a given nest, 

 I could distinguish the sexes by the direction in which they left 

 the nest. At one nest the male bird always left flying straight 

 toward Avhere I sat and usually passed three or four feet over my 

 head, not paying the slightest attention to me. 



The birds feed the young only at long intervals, rarely as short 

 as fifteen minutes and usually of from three quarters of an hour 

 to an hour or more. Feeding, in every case that I watched, was 

 by the method of regurgitation common to this species, which has 

 been so well described by other observers. I believe, however, 

 that the young are occasionally fed directly by food from the bill 

 which has not been first swallowed by the parent. Once, as I 

 approached a nest, I saw a Waxwing near it with a spider in its 

 bill, which it was evidently about to feed the young. I saw it too 

 late to stop myself, however, and frightened the bird off by my 

 close approach. I believe that the method of feeding from the 

 throat is not true regurgitation but is merely a convenient method 

 of carrying more food at a time than could be taken in the bill, 

 and accounts, in part at least, for the long intervals between feeding. 

 The food, which in my observations was principally wild cherries, 

 was never mashed or digested in any wa} r , but was fed to the young 

 whole, stones and all. 



The parent birds from the different nests made trips for food 

 in small flocks, usually of four or five. The cherry trees where 

 most of the food was obtained grew along the shore about a quarter 

 of a mile from the nests. The small flocks usually gathered in the 

 tops of a few dead stubs that stood above the thicket, and left these 



