of the tail, the touch of white under the eye and the black bar through it. Could 

 old Polonius, in Hamlet, have hit oft better the dress of the waxwing than he 

 did the attire to be preferred by his son Laertes? 



''Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy; 

 Yet, not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy/' 



The conspicuous crest of the waxwing, slightly raised in the picture, together 

 with the black and white about the eye, give him an animated, wide-awake appear- 

 ance, yet he is not noisy nor active nor quarrelsome. On the contrary, he is a 

 genteel bird, as quiet, moderate and well-behaved as he is well dressed. Occa- 

 sionally they seem to overdo the "after you, my dear Alfonso" act as is shown 

 by the following observation narrated by Mabel Osgood Wright in Birdcraft. 



"Last May a flock of fifty or more lodged for a whole morning in a half-dead 

 ash tree near the house, so that seated at ease I could focus my glass carefully 

 and watch them at leisure. They were as solemn as so many demure Quakers 

 sitting stiffly in rows ; once in a while they shifted about, and seemed to do a 

 great deal of apologizing for fancied jostlings. Their movements interested me 

 greatly, until finally, to my surprise, I saw an illustration of the old story of 

 their extreme politeness in passing food to one another, which I had always re- 

 garded as a pretty bit of fiction. A stout, green worm (for they eat animal as 

 well as vegetable food) was passed up and down a row of eight birds; once, twice 

 it went the rounds, until half way on its third trip it became a wreck and dropped 

 to the ground, so that no one enjoyed it." 



The waxwings live in flocks except during the breeding season. They live 

 chiefly on wild fruits. In winter they are most commonly seen in the mountain- 

 ash trees feeding on the berries. They are fond of the buds of the elm and 

 often the walk under a feeding flock is sprinkled with the bud-scales that they 

 have rejected. The young are fed on insects, during the breeding season; there- 

 fore, the waxwings are valuable assistants on the farm as bug-exterminators. 

 They are expert fly-catchers. Taking up a position on some commanding limb 

 or tree-stub, they dart ofif into the air after a passing insect, returning to the same 

 perch time after time, after the fashion of the pewee and phoebe. 



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 farmers' 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 from choice as from necessity. Perhaps they feel about the 

 wild cherry as Mr. Henry van Dyke feels about "That concentrated essence of 

 all the pungent sweetness of the wildwood" — the wild strawbery ; "doubtless God 

 could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." 



677 



