IS WISCONSIN BIRD-STUDY BULLETIN. 



are valuable assistants on the farm as bug-exterminators. They are 

 expert flycatchers. Taking up a position on some commanding limb 

 or tree-stub, they dart off into the air after a passing insect, return- 

 ing to the same perch time after time after the fashion of the pewee 

 and phaebe. 



The waxwings know as well as the farmer when the early cherries 

 are fit to eat and they help themselves so freely that they have earned 

 the unfortunate name of cherry -bird and with it the farmer's ill-will. 

 The name is unfortunate because people who know him by that name 

 only would naturally think him to be a bad bird, whereas his habit of 

 eating injurious insects makes him one of the desirable birds. 



As the waxwings do not seriously harm the late cherries but prefer 

 the wild ones and other wild fruits then in season^ it would seem that 

 they take the early ones not so much fro-m choice as from necessity. 

 Perhaps they feel about the v/ild cherry as Mr. Henry Van Dyke feels 

 about "That concentrated essence of all the pungent sweetness of tlie 

 wildwood"* the wild strawberry; "Doubtless God could have made a 

 better berry^ but doubtless God never did." 



The waxwings are classified with the song-birds more from their 

 structure and habits — or from courtesy — than from any performance 

 of which they are capable as singers. 



A remark of Mr. Chapman's about the flycatchers f applies equally 

 well, if not more nicely, to these birds : ' ' When music was distributed, 

 I believe most of our flycatchers had back seats. It was an unfortun- 

 ate circumstance, for their sedentary habits and apparently thought- 

 ful, serious, even poetic dispositions make one believe that with 

 proper training they might have taken high rank as musicians." 



We might fancy that the waxwings occupied front seats at the dis- 

 tribution but that their serious minds were opposed to music as being 

 frivolous, in fact, that when they assumed the Quaker garb, they ac- 

 cepted also, as the Quakers did, the injunction, "Let your communica- 

 tion be Yea, yea; Nay, nay." At all events, these brief expressions 

 uttered in a thin, high-pitched, nasal whistle are their whole stock in 

 conversational trade. 



Sitting in a treetop one after another whistles his faint little nay, 

 naj^ that may be heard hardly more than two hundred feet. Sud- 

 denly the flock takes wing and they send forth, almost in chorus, a 

 rapid succession of yea, yea, yeas. 



The Bohemian waxwing is found sparingly in Wisconsin in winter. 

 It is most frequent in the northern part and along the region border- 

 ing Lake Michigan. 



The colors and markings are very similar to those of the cedar 

 waxwing but the bird is noticeably larger. 



*' ' The Wild Strawberry "in Fisherman's Luck by Henry Van Dyke. 

 ■\ Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, F. M. Chapman. 



