THE BOHEMIAN WAXWING: A COSMOPOLITE 451 
original zom de plume among the many aliases we find.” 
It is hard to resist the temptation to quote further from 
Coues’ smoothly-running account of the Waxwing rather 
than limp along on my own halting feet, such is the wealth 
of information he pours forth regarding different phases of 
the bird’s history,—the scholarly speculations regarding the 
origin of its various names, the interesting quotations from 
Gesner (1617) and other writers of bygone times, and the 
accounts of occurrences and habits in various regions—but 
it may not be amiss to point out here that some of the 
finest ornithological writing extant is to be found on the 
pages of this government report of forty years ago, where it 
is all too likely to be overlooked by a present day searcher 
for information. 
The specific name, garrulus, is as conspicuous a mis- 
nomer as may be found in ornithology, for Waxwings are 
unusually silent birds. They have no song nor any noisy 
call. Their only utterance is a sibilant, buzzing note, not to 
be heard at any great distance. Garrulus, a generic term 
applied to a group of Old World jays, may have come into 
use as a specific name for the Waxwing at a time when it was 
regarded as a kind of jay, and thus may have no reference 
to any supposed noisiness of the bird; what is not so easy 
to understand is how the group of birds to which the Wax- 
wing belongs, all of them notably quiet species, came to have 
applied to them, as it is, the term “‘chatterer.”” The common 
name “Waxwing” needs, of course, no explanation to any- 
one who has had the opportunity of seeing the peculiar orna- 
ments which are affixed to the bird’s secondary flight 
feathers, so exactly are they like adherent drops of red 
sealing wax. “Bohemian” may perhaps have had its origin 
in early occurrences of the species in Bohemia; as now used 
it indicates the vagrant, irresponsible nature of the bird. 
The Bohemian Waxwing is a boreal species, ranging over 
northern Europe, Asia, and North America, but it is by no 
means so arctic in its preferences as most early writers 
supposed. For many years its nesting was unknown. 
Enormous flocks appeared in central Europe at irregular 
