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. 
When Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, who was the first 
to count this common wax wing 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 waxwing, 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 no 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 
