A large flock of Cedar and Bohemian Waxwings put on a show trying to strip a crabapple tree on the Dartmouth campus yesterday. It was interesting to see how tightly some of the crabapples held on and how hard some of the birds had to work to get them. But they seemed to have plenty of time, and the tree had more than enough crabapples to keep them busy for at least the day.
The Cedars outnumbered the Bohemians. Here is a photo with one of each; the Bohemian is the one below.
The way I quickly tell the species apart is by looking at the undertail coverts. The Bohemian has rufus coverts as can be seen in the photo below.
Cedar Waxwings have whitish undertail coverts as in the photo below.
Sometimes the branches got crowded.
And sometimes they nicely took turns. Below you can see a Bohemian followed by a Cedar on the same branch.
Sometime the birds grabbed a crabapples and flew across the street to enjoy it as in the sequence below.
Sometimes the birds had to think long and hard before swallowing.
Sometimes no matter how hard the waxwing tried the darn crabapples would not yield.
Here is another Cedar Waxwing doing battle with a crabapples.
After several tries this Cedar got the crabapples.
Here are some other photos I captured Sunday near the Baker Library.
For those who care about such things, these photos were all shot handheld with a 200-500 mm f/5.6 lens at f/5.6 or f/8 and ISO 200 or 400.