162 THE WAXWING 



famine even in years of moderate plenty. Having few enemies, a 

 series of unusually plenteous years might well raise the number of 

 individuals till they exceeded the food-supply, for it has already been 

 shown that both in Europe and in North America flocks of countless 

 thousands have been met with. 



Among the agents at work in reducing the numbers of wild 

 animals, man, civilised and savage, may always be regarded as playing 

 the most prominent part. In the autumn, after feeding a while on the 

 bounteous harvest of berries, waxwings become very fat, and in Russia 

 are esteemed table delicacies. Seebohm found numbers frozen, in the 

 markets of St. Petersburg, 1 and selected some of the finest specimens 

 for his collection. These are proved to be males, and from this fact, 

 and observations of flocks of living birds which he saw, he concluded 

 that the sexes separate during winter. They are to be seen, it is 

 said, in thousands in some seasons, in Russian markets. In the 

 market at Archangel 2 he found live birds offered for sale, and was 

 told they were common in the neighbourhood till the end of 

 November, when, as the weather increased in severity, they dis- 

 appeared. In the game market of Christiania, according to Mr. St. 

 Quintin, " cartloads " were exposed for sale in January 1872. 3 



There is a chaste beauty in the plumage of the waxwing, and 

 this fact, combined with its sudden appearance in large numbers, at 

 irregular intervals, attracts, as we have remarked, the attention of even 

 the most unobservant. The more enlightened and kindly disposed 

 have been content to admire the bird, but the superstitious and the 

 seekers after trouble have come to regard these visitations as bad 

 omens, coincidence feeding their diseased imagination, as when in 1571 

 they appeared in Italy about Modena and Placentia, avoiding Ferrara, 

 where an earthquake and floods soon after appeared. The Eskimo 

 name of the waxwing means " a killer of small birds," the curious wax- 

 red appendages of the wings being regarded as the clotted blood of its 



1 Seebohm, British Birds, vol. ii. p. 3. 2 Seebohm, Birds of Siberia, p. 336. 



St. Quintin, Avic. Mag., 1909, vol. vii. p. 118, 



