WAXWING WINTER
Posted: 18.12.23 in Articles category
It started with a Waxwing. Perversely, my interest in birdwatching began when I didn't see one because I wasn't in the right place to see it. When I was only seven years old, my parents and young sister saw an unusual bird feeding on berries in our garden in Maidstone, Kent. They told me about it when I returned from school and my interest was kindled. I was disappointed that I hadn't seen their bird and I was intrigued to find out more. That bird was a Waxwing - a pink bird the size of a Starling with a distinctive crest, black eye-mask and wings attractively edged with black, white, red and wax-yellow. In that winter of 1966 Britain saw a huge influx of these beautiful visitors from Finland and northern Russia, coming here for our milder winter climate and relative abundance of rowan berries. Many older birdwatchers still remember that year for the 'Waxwing invasion' when tens of thousands wintered here.
Shortly afterwards my family moved to a countryside house with a large garden with plenty of birds to see and hear. I quickly developed my avian interest, helped by the encouragement of one of my primary school teachers and by joining the Young Ornithologist Club run by the RSPB, but all the while I longed to see the bird that had eluded me in Maidstone. Indeed, at the age of 11 I wrote a poem about my hobby and mused whether seeing a Waxwing might satiate my interest:
"BIRDWATCHING"
It was from that it started.
It led me into a new world.
A world of birds.
A world of Lundy, Fetlar, Fair Isle, St Kilda.
A world of excitement and disappointment.
From the gannet, diving in the sea,
To the treecreeper, running up a tree.
From the zigzag flying snipe
To the high soaring swift.
It is a world of magnificence and splendour,
A world of solo and duet.
Yet I wonder would I give it up,
Just because I might see
The bird I have never seen
Eventually I saw my first Waxwing when I was 17 while on a birdwatching holiday in Scotland, but I continued to watch birds. What's more, I have seen loads of Waxwings since then. At my home in Northumberland I am lucky enough to enjoy seeing them and hearing their distinctive soft trilling call whenever we have a ‘Waxwing Winter’. After several years of paucity, this 2023/4 winter has already proved to be a good one in North East England for Waxwings. Since late October perhaps as many as four thousand have been seen across the region. During the past 3 weeks I have watched flocks of up to 50 Waxwings from my house and I have been surprised to see the variety of food they have eaten; not just berries like rowan and cotoneaster, but also alder seeds and even flies which they flew up and caught like flycatchers. Even this morning, 18 December, there are still Waxwings around the village. I saw 10 birds outside my front door, perched on a favoured ‘lookout’ tree until the local Starlings chased them off again. Yet I am confident that they will be back to eat what’s left of our rowan berries.
Sure enough – two hours later!