For more than a week now I’ve seen these little birds (maybe 50 of them) swarming in and around the gap that I can see from my fourth floor apartment building. It’s right along, and above the approach ramp to the interstate which dominates my view.
I saw them at various times of the day. And they were always swarming, almost like the famous murmurations that Starlings make over various parts of the world.
I couldn’t identify them. They didn’t seem to be like any birds I had ever seen before. And this behavior was strange too – but entertaining.
But yesterday just as I was looking out the window, they were all swarming into and around a palm tree that is between our parking lot and the ramp.
So I grabbed my big old bazooka of a lens (the new 200-500) and tried to capture at least a glimpse of them.
This shot, at least allowed me to make a clear identification. The yellow belly. The black mask. The yellow tipped tail. No question – they are Cedar Waxwings.
As you can see, I was only sorta successful. These little suckers are fast! And they don’t normally stay anyplace for long.
But I did catch this one with a berry in his mouth; a berry that he had just plucked from the generous stock of palm berries (fruit?) of that particular tree. This is why they were swarming around and landing in the tree. If you look closely at the picture above you’ll see at least eight birds.
And in this last shot you can see that they’ve just about stripped this palm bare.
When they finally swarmed away from the palm, they must have decided that it was time to call it a day. They swept up into the sky, wheeled off to the north, dipped and swooped a couple more times, and vanished into the very top of a huge Live Oak across the way.
I can’t brag on the quality of any of these photos. But considering that I was holding a 200-500mm lens without a tripod, and that I was shooting through my living room window, I think I did okay.
Jim McDade, Photographer 