Tips for spring

  

A flock of Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) returned to our yard this weekend.  The lighting was quite nice this morning (20 March 2022), so I decided to try for a few photos.  Things weren't quite working out, but then I noticed something interesting.  I had zoomed in on the image on my camera to check the focus and I noticed that this individual had more than the typical yellow coloration on its tail.

Waxwings are known for having red waxy tips on their secondary wing feathers — like this:

 

 

 

But if you look closely, the waxwing in the first photo (above) has red-orange waxy tips on its tail feathers.  Here's a closer view:

 

 

 

I couldn't remember seeing this before, so I read a little more about it in Birds of the World.  Here's what it said — "Waxy appendages...are found on up to 8 central rectrices (among r1–r4) in 0.3–0.9% of museum specimen and banded bird samples."

 

So it's pretty rare to find a waxwing with waxy tips on its tail feathers.  Also, it's a little hard to count, but it appears that on the bird I photographed there are 12 red-orange waxy tips (Cedar Waxwings have 12 tail feathers.)