Bombycilla cedrorum

Geographic Range

Cedar waxwings ( Bombycillia cedrorum ) are found only in North America. Their breeding range extends throughout the southern half of Canada and the northern half of the United States. The winter range includes the United States, Mexico and Central America as far south as Panama. They also winter in the Caribbean region. Many birds in the northern United States and extreme southern Canada are year-round residents.

Vagrant cedar waxwings are occasionally seen in Iceland and Great Britain.

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic nearctic
  • native native

Habitat

Cedar waxwings nest in open woodlands (deciduous, coniferous and mixed) or oldfield habitats. They prefer habitats with numerous small trees and shrubs for nesting and food. They frequently inhabit riparian areas, which provide nesting shrubs and trees, fruits and emerging aquatic insects, but also use farms, orchards, conifer plantations, and suburban gardens.

• Habitat Regions
• temperate temperate
• terrestrial terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland savanna or grassland
• forest forest

• Other Habitat Features
• suburban suburban
• agricultural agricultural
• riparian riparian

Physical Description

Cedar waxwings are sleek birds with silky plumage. They are approximately 15.5 cm in length and weigh about 32 g. Adults have a grayish-brown plumage with pale yellow on the breast and belly. The secondary wing feathers are tipped with red wax-like droplets, and the tail is square with a bright yellow band at the tip. Cedar waxwings have a crest and a black mask edged with white.

Male and female waxwings are similar in appearance, but males have a slightly darker chin patch. Females may also be slightly heavier than males during the breeding season. Juvenile cedar waxwings look similar to adults, but are greyer overall, have streaking on their underparts and a much smaller crest and lack the red tips on their secondary feathers.

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic endothermic
• bilateral symmetry bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• sexes alike
• ornamentation ornamentation

Reproduction

Cedar waxwings are monogamous within each breeding season. Males court females by doing a hopping dance and passing pieces of fruit, flower petals or insects to their potential mate. If the female is interested in the male, she reciprocates the hopping and passes the item back to the male. This sequence may be repeated many times. After pairs form, the female chooses the nest site. Pairs form beginning in spring, and the birds typically nest and breed from June through August. If the first breeding attempt is successful, the pair usually stays together for a second brood.

• Mating System
• monogamous monogamous

Cedar waxwings breed between June and August. A pair may raise one or two broods during a single breeding season. The female lays 2 to 5 eggs (usually 4 or 5), one per day in early morning. She incubates the eggs for 11 to 13 days (usually 12). The altricial chicks are blind, weak, and naked. They remain in the nest for 14 to 18 days (average 15 days) before venturing out on short flights near the nest. Parents continue to feed the young for 6 to 10 days after they fledge. As early as three or four days after leaving the nest, young waxwings may form flocks with other young from nearby nests. They mature in these flocks and may breed the next summer.

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous iteroparous
• seasonal breeding seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual sexual
• oviparous oviparous
• sperm-storing sperm-storing

Female cedar waxwings incubate the eggs and brood the chicks for the first 9 days after hatching. During incubation, the male brings food to the female. He also perches in a high exposed place to guard the nest and alert females to the presence of predators. The male and female provide food to the chicks during the hatchling stage and for up to 10 days after fledging. Both parents maintain sanitary conditions in the nest by removing fecal sacks of the chicks and either eating them or dropping them outside the nest.

• Parental Investment
• altricial altricial
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• pre-independence
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female

Lifespan/Longevity

The oldest known cedar waxwing lived 7 years in the wild.

Behavior

Cedar waxwings are nomadic. Flocks of cedar waxwings move from place to place throughout the year, except during the breeding season. Some populations are also migratory. Cedar waxwings are very social. They travel in flocks, and do not defend a territory, even during the breeding season. There may be some social hierarchy within flocks of cedar waxwings, but this has not been studied.

• Key Behaviors
• arboreal arboreal
• flies
• diurnal diurnal
• motile motile
• nomadic nomadic
• migratory migratory
• social social

Home Range

The home range size of cedar waxwings is unknown.

Communication and Perception

Cedar waxwings communicate using vocal and physical signals. They produce several calls that are variations of either rapidly repeated buzzy high-pitched notes or high-pitched hissy whistles. These calls can communicate hunger, anxiety, well-being and a number of other messages. They are produced by male and female adults as well as chicks. Cedar waxwings also communicate using physical displays. For example, they may communicate anxiety by raising the crest on their heads. They can signal that they are feeling threatened by opening their mouths and ruffling their feathers. Females usually display this behavior to signal rejection of a male's attempt at courtship.

• Communication Channels
• visual visual
• acoustic acoustic

• Perception Channels
• visual visual
• tactile tactile
• acoustic acoustic
• chemical chemical

Food Habits

During the winter, cedar waxwings eat fruit almost exclusively. They rely heavily on cedar berries, especially in the northern part of their range. The birds take the fruit from the tree by holding on to a branch and plucking it off with their beaks. They do this sitting upright or dangling upside-down. They also can remove the fruit from the tree while hovering. Cedar waxwings also eat the fruits of other shrubs that retain berries in winter, such as hollies.

During the summer months, cedar waxwings switch to eating mostly insects. Often, the waxwings will catch their prey by congregating around ponds and streams and waiting for the insects to emerge from the water. Most of the time, they snatch their prey right out of the air. They also glean bark and forage through tree branches for insects.

• Primary Diet
• carnivore carnivore
  • insectivore insectivore
• herbivore herbivore
  • frugivore frugivore
• omnivore omnivore

• Animal Foods
• insects

• Plant Foods
• fruit

Predation

Known predators of adult cedar waxwings include merlins , sharp-shinned hawks , Cooper’s hawks , common grackles and bullfrogs , which attack the waxwings as they drink from stock ponds. Blue jays are known predators of nestlings and house wrens have been observed eating waxwing eggs.

Cedar waxwings may respond to a threat by assuming an erect posture, apparently to make themselves more cryptic. If flying together in a flock, they may crowd together and fly in specific formations to evade pursuers. During the incubation and the nestling periods, males guard the nest and give a warning call when predators approach. Parents whose nest is threatened may try to distract the predator by flying away from the nest in a zig-zag path, or by diving at the predator. Unlike many other small bird species, cedar waxwings are not known to mob large predators.

Ecosystem Roles

Cedar waxwings disperse seeds of the plants that they eat while eating the berries and through defecation. They also affect populations of the insects that they eat. Finally, cedar waxwings host external parasites, including feather mites and hippoboscid flies .

• Ecosystem Impact
• disperses seeds

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive

Cedar waxwings eat insects that some people consider to be pests.

• Positive Impacts
• controls pest population

Economic Importance for Humans: Negative

Cedar waxwings eat some economically valuable fruit crops.

• Negative Impacts
• crop pest

Conservation Status

Cedar waxwings are common throughout their range, and have increased in number over the past several decades. This population increase is probably due in part to the increase in fruiting trees and shrubs as agricultural lands revert to forest.

Cedar waxwings are protected under the U.S. Migratory Bird Act. They are not protected under CITES or the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Other Comments

Bombycillia cedrorum is one of only three species of waxwing in the family of Bombycillidae. The other two species are found in North America ( Bohemian waxwing ) and Japan ( Japanese waxwing ).

Additional Links

Encyclopedia of Life

BioKIDS Critter Catalog

Contributors

Kari Kirschbaum (editor), Animal Diversity Web.

Laura Klein (author), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Kerry Yurewicz (editor), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

References

Robbins, C., B. Bruun, H. Zim. 1966. Birds of North America . New York: Western Publishing Inc.

University of Georgia Museum of Natural History, 2000. "Species Description: Cedar Waxwing" (On-line). Georgia Wildlife Web. Accessed 03/23/08 at http://dromus.nhm.uga.edu/~GMNH/gawildlife/index.php?page=speciespages/species_page&key=bcedrorum .

Witmer, M., D. Mountjoy, L. Elliot. 1997. Cedar waxwing ( Bombycilla cedrorum ). Pp. 1-28 in The Birds of North America , Vol. 309. Philadelphia, PA: The Academy of Natural Sciences and Washington DC: The American Ornithologists Union.