The Cedar Waxwing 
191 
Fruits and 
Blossoms 
grape-vine, cedar or hemlock bark, and feathers, hair or wool; and it 
sometimes includes rags, string, lint, paper, or yarn in its construction. 
The eggs number three to five; are pale bluish, or bluish gray, with 
more or less of a purple tint ; and taper rather suddenly toward the small 
end, where they are marked with small distinct roundish spots of blackish 
or umber. The large end is marked with various touches and shades of 
purple. An egg is laid daily until the set is complete. The male and 
the female are said to take turns in sitting and in feeding the young, 
which hatch after about fourteen days’ incubation. 
The food of the Cedar Waxwing consists very largely of fruit; but 
most of it is wild fruit of no value to man. 
The Biological Survey finds that nine-tenths of its food for the year 
is vegetable matter, almost wholly wild fruits and seeds. The animal 
food consists mainly of insects. When the Waxwings 
come in spring, they may be seen pecking at the blos- 
soms of fruit-trees and scattering the petals broadcast; 
but when their stomachs have been examined quantities of the insects 
that infest blossoms have been found. They are fond of leaf-eating 
beetles, and devour quantities of the Colorado potato-beetle and the 
pernicious elm-leaf beetle, which has proved so destructive to elms 
recently in the Eastern States. 
Outram Bangs informed me that Waxwings entirely cleared his 
young elms of this pest. Mrs. Mary Treat notes a similar instance. This 
bird is very fond of the small geometrid caterpillars that strip the foliage 
from apple-trees, elms and other trees, and it destroys enormous quan- 
tities of these worms. Professor Forbes estimates that a flock of thirty 
of these birds will eat 90,000 canker-worms a month — a very moderate 
estimate, for the appetite of the bird is unlimited. The young are fed 
quantities of insects, and, as they grow older, the parents give them fruit. 
The food is usually regurgitated into the open mouths of the little ones. 
In late summer and early fall the waxwing imitates a flycatcher, and, 
taking its post on some tall tree, usually near a pond or river, launches 
out over water or meadow in pursuit of flying insects. Birds taken at 
such times have been found crammed with insects to 
the very throat. Grasshoppers, crickets, crane-flies, Insect=Eaters 
lace-wings, butterflies, moths, bugs, bark-lice, and 
scale-insects form part of their bill-of-fare, with occasionally a few 
snails. They seem to do little injury to cultivated fruit except to the 
cherry-crop, and most of this usually may be avoided by planting a 
goodly number of early mulberry-trees when planting cherries. In my 
own orchard the mulberries attracted almost all birds away from the 
cherries. The best varieties of mulberries to plant are the Early Russian, 
the Charles Downing, and the New American. 
The fly-catching habit of these birds is sometimes exercised even in 
winter. Mr. Brewster notes that on March 1, 1866, in Watertown, 
Massachusetts, he saw the members of a large flock busily catching snow- 
