Cedar Waxwing

• GeneralA group will pass berries from bill to bill along a branch.
• It passes food from bill to bill: flocks perched in a row along a branch pass a berry from one bird to the next until one of them eats it, a social behaviour with no clear equivalent in other birds.
• It can get drunk: when it eats fermented berries it takes in enough alcohol to become disoriented, and in some years dazed waxwings are picked up beneath the rowans in towns.
• The tail tip of some individuals is orange instead of yellow: the change is caused by a pigment from an introduced exotic honeysuckle, and appears only in birds that grew up eating its fruit.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Open woodland, copses, orchards and gardens with berry-bearing shrubs in North America

Size at birth

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Sexual maturity

12 months

Gestation / incubation

14 days

Litter / clutch size

4

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombycilla_cedrorum

Best time: From winter to early spring, when the flocks range across North America in search of shrubs laden with berries.