452 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE 
intervals during the winter months, to disappear again 
in the spring. The flocking habit, of course, gives con- 
spicuousness to any species which, otherwise, might escape 
notice, and the Waxwing is extremely gregarious. Winter 
gatherings are often large in number, and the birds, in 
closely gathered ranks, traveling swiftly or wheeling all 
together with military exactitude, are calculated to arrest 
attention wherever they appear. Then, the striking char- 
acters of the birds—the peculiarly silky plumage and pleasing 
colors, the tall crest and the odd, crimson wing tips—cannot 
but add still more to the interest already aroused. No wonder 
that the far-off nesting ground was invested with mystery, 
no wonder the belief that “somewhere, perhaps in the very 
focus of the aurora borealis, this mysterious bird swarmed 
to nest in a sort of rookery.” 
Waxwings, however, are tree dwellers; so that naturally, 
the nesting grounds cannot lie north of the limits where 
trees grow. From what is now known it seems likely that 
a large part of the Bohemian Waxwing’s summer habitat, 
perhaps most of it, lies within the north temperate zone. 
Nests were first found in 1856, in Finland, by an English 
naturalist, Mr. John Wolley, and his discovery was the basis 
for descriptions of habits, nests, and eggs, so exact and so 
detailed as to leave little for others to add. 
In America, until recently, the history of the Bohemian 
Waxwing consisted for the most part merely of reports of 
winter occurrences in the northern United States, some 
years in one section, then in another. As far back as 1861 
a nest was taken at Fort Yukon by Kennicott, and another 
on the Anderson River by MacFarlane, each containing 
one egg, but no other was found until 1901, when Allan 
Brooks (who drew the illustration accompanying this 
article) discovered Waxwings breeding in the Cariboo 
district, British Columbia, and for the first time gave some 
details of the nesting habits of the American race. Since 
then nests have been found once in Alberta and at two other 
places in British Columbia, the last time, on the upper 
Stikine River, by the present writer and Mr. Joseph Dixon 
