Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 



being nearly an inch and a half in length ; rufous at the base, 

 shading into light gray above. Velvety-black forehead, chin, 

 and line through the eye. Wings grayish brown, with very 

 dark quills, which have two white bars; the bar at the edge 

 of the upper wing coverts being tipped with red sealing-wax- 

 like points, that give the bird its name. A few wing feathers 

 tipped with yellow on outer edge. Tail quills dark brown, 

 with yellow band across the end, and faint red streaks on 

 upper and inner sides. 



Range — Northern United States and British America. Most com- 

 mon in Canada and northern Mississippi region. 



Migrations — Very irregular winter visitor. 



V^hen Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, who was the first 

 to count this common waxwing of Europe and Asia among the birds 

 of North America, published an account of it in his "Synopsis," 

 it was considered a very rare bird indeed. It may be these wax- 

 wings have greatly increased, but however uncommon they may 

 still be considered, certainly no one who had ever seen a flock 

 containing more than a thousand of them, resting on the trees of 

 a lawn within sight of New York City, as the writer has done, 

 could be expected to consider the birds "very rare." 



The Bohemian wax\ving, like the only other member of the 

 family that ever visits us, the cedar-bird, is a roving gipsy. In 

 Germany they say seven years must elapse between its visitations, 

 which the superstitious old cronies are wont to associate with 

 woful stories of pestilence — just such tales as are resurrected from 

 the depths of morbid memories here when a comet reappears or 

 the seven-year locust ascends from the ground. 



The goings and comings of these birds are certainly most 

 erratic and infrequent; nevertheless, when hunger drives them 

 from the far north to feast upon the juniper and other winter 

 berries of our Northern States, they come in enormous flocks, 

 making up in quantity what they lack in regularity of visits and 

 evenness of distribution. 



Surely ho bird has less right to be associated with evil than 

 this mild waxwing. It seems the very incarnation of peace and 

 harmony. Part of a flock that has lodged in a tree will sit almost 

 motionless for hours and whisper in softly hissed twitterings, 

 very much as a company of Quaker ladies, similarly dressed, 

 might sit at yearly meeting. Exquisitely clothed in silky-gray 

 feathers that no berry juice is ever permitted to stain, they are 



89 



