Bird of the week - Waxwing

This bird is perhaps our most beautiful winter visitor, and is certainly highly prized by wildlife photographers.  I joined the throng outside Ashington Police Station yesterday to take these photos.  There were a few Sorbus trees with remaining berries and a dozen waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) were there to finish them off.

It was a cold, windy cloudy day and the photography was very challenging, with the birds silhouetted against a white sky.  These were the best I could manage.

Waxwings breed in Fennoscandia and the numbers arriving in the UK vary enormously from year to year.  2016/17 was a great winter for them but numbers so far this winter have been small.  Waxwings spread south and west across the country as they eat the berries and can be found almost anywhere.  They favour Sorbus berries and can often be found in urban settings.  This map is from the BTO Bird Atlas Mapstore.

The waxwing is known as the Chatterer in Thomas Bewick's A History of British Birds.

Bewick wrote

Our Bohemian waxwings also occur in North America and were painted by John James Audubon in Birds of America - he called this bird the Bohemian Chatterer.  Incidentally, Audubon met Bewick in Newcastle in 1827.  I am sure they had a lot to talk about.  Audubon was 32 years younger and Bewick died the following year at the age of 75.

Archibald Thorburn made this study of waxwings in 1924.

You can listen to the waxwing's trilling call here.  And listen to John Aitchison's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on waxwings here.