The Cedar Waxwing 
alive with birds,—birds of a ravishing beauty, albeit engaged in a scramble 
for food as unseemly as that of an American pie-eating contest. You 
would suppose that a bird so beautiful would behave with becoming 
decorum, or at least pause for admiration. But no, it is gobble, gobble, 
gobble, and the red berries disappear almost faster than one can count. 
At a squeak, a little louder than the rest, perhaps, though we cannot tell 
it, the whole company bursts out of the sheltering greenery, effects an 
instant and graceful squadron formation, and either retires, squeaking, to 
a conspicuous outpost, such as a leafless sycamore tree, or else plumps 
unquenched into some other green fountain of peppery consolation. 
Thus the normal Bombycilline day divides itself into frequent periods 
of disgraceful gluttony, alternating with periods of dignified retirement. 
Needless to say, the latter period is concerned chiefly with digestion; but 
when we know how little these greedy beauties really get out of their food, 
we may pardon their apparent voracity. As Dr. Grinnell' has pointed out, 
it is only the viscid coating of the kernel of a pepper berry which has an 
agreeable flavor and furnishes nourishment, so that the papery hulls and 
the peppery centers require to be disgorged. This operation appears to 
involve momentary distress, and is accomplished by two or three coughs 
and a sidewise jerk of the head, which disposes of several kernels at once. 
Aside from these exspuitive interruptions, the sight of a snug company 
of Cedarbirds lined up on a telegraph wire, or bunched in a treetop, is 
pleasing in the extreme. The soft body-plumage of melting browns and 
saffrons and Quaker drabs, set off by the abrupt black “trimmings” of the 
head, the military crest, and the erect soldierly pose of the figure, give one 
a somewhat awed impression. 
And that squeak! The Cedarbird, being so singularly endowed with 
the gift of beauty, is denied the gift of song. He is, in fact, the most 
nearly voiceless of any of the American Oscines, his sole note being a high- 
pitched, sibilant squeak. Indeed, so high-pitched is this extraordinary 
note, that many people, and they trained bird-men, cannot hear it at all, 
even when the Waxwings are squeaking all about them. Cedarbirds are 
especially noisy when scrambling for food but the self-same squeaks issue 
from a motionless company in the treetop; and the bird seems to have 
settled upon this note because it requires least effort. Discussion is 
liveliest just before flight, and the squeaking continues while the birds 
are a-wing. 
The food of the Cedarbirds is 87 per cent vegetable. Insects, espe¬ 
cially noxious beetles, are levied upon moderately the year around, and 
are fed to the young almost exclusively in August. Wild fruits and 
berries are, however, the staple diet, and of these, because their “caloric” 
J Auk, Vol. XIV., July, 1897, p. 318. 
552 
