Species group · Birds
WAnimals has 2 species of waxwing, in the family Bombycillidae.
Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 2.
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
No species documented in this group is genuinely at risk according to the IUCN, with the data available today.
Recorded in 18 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
A group will pass berries from bill to bill along a branch.
From Cedar Waxwing
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.
From Cedar Waxwing
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.
From Cedar Waxwing
Its winter irruptions are unpredictable: when the rowan berry crop fails in the north, tens of thousands of waxwings come down into western and central Europe, and in those winters they turn up in city gardens where they are not seen for years at a time.
From Bohemian Waxwing
It can actually get drunk: when the berries it eats have started to ferment, it takes in enough alcohol to become disoriented, and its liver is disproportionately large in order to metabolise it.
From Bohemian Waxwing