450 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE 
THE BOHEMIAN WAXWING: A COSMOPOLITE 
HARRY S. SWARTH 
There are few species of birds, especially of the smaller 
kinds, that have inspired such general interest as the 
Bohemian Waxwing. This bird is of wide distribution, 
both in the Old World and the New, and the peculiar habits 
of the species unfailingly bring it, in its periodical winter 
invasion of the southland, to the notice of all who are in the 
least interested in bird study, as well as to many who rarely 
give a thought to the birds around them. Published ref- 
erences to the Waxwing date back hundreds of years, to a 
remote period when the occasional winter visitations of large 
flocks to southern Europe aroused the superstitious dread 
of people to whom anything unusual was ominous. In later 
years such fears departed, but the spectacular arrival of the 
birds, coupled with their notable beauty and curious ways, 
has always resulted in their comings and goings being more 
carefully noted and reported upon than is the case with most 
migratory birds. Ornithological literature is full of references 
to the migration and winter occurrence of the Waxwing. 
The Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrula) is a 
Linnaean species. That is, the specific name now in use was 
applied by Linnaeus, who called the species Lanius 
garrulus in his Systema Naturae (1758); but the bird was a 
familiar one to many writers before him. As Elliott Coues 
wrote (Birds of the Colorado Valley, 1878, p. 461), “‘This 
famous vagabond wandered into literature, with fine 
‘Bohemian’ instinct, at so remote a period in the history of 
ornithology, that it is not easy to determine which was its 
