Cedar Waxwing

Look for

A sleek, crested, tan-brown bird with a black mask, pale yellow belly, and a bright yellow tail-tip. The "wax" comes from the red drop-shaped tips on the wing feathers — looks exactly like sealing wax.

Size: ~7.25" — between a sparrow and a robin. Compact and elegant.

Listen for

• Call: a very high, thin, wheezy "seeeee" or "sree" — almost inaudible at distance. A whole flock sounds like a faint wash of whistles.
• No real song — just the high whistles.

Where in Memphis

Follow the berries. Waxwings are nomadic — flocks of 10 to 100+ birds roam through Memphis searching for berry-heavy trees: holly, hackberry, cedar, pokeweed, dogwood, mulberry, privet, crabapple. A flock descends, strips a tree in minutes, and moves on.

Classic spots:

• Cemeteries with old hollies
• Overton Park dogwoods and hackberries
• Backyards with flowering crabs or serviceberries
• Lichterman pond-edge berries

Behavior

• Flock-feed, flock-fly. They arrive and depart as units.
• Share berries down the line — classic courtship ritual: males pass berries to females beak-to-beak, the gesture moving up and down a perched pair for minutes.
• Occasionally drunk — ferment-overripe berries can intoxicate entire flocks (similar to robins). Memphis occasionally gets reports of window-strikes from tipsy waxwings.

Story

"Cedarbird" — named for their love of Eastern Red Cedar berries (juniper berries). Southern stands of old-growth cedar historically drew huge winter flocks.

Their red waxy wing-tips are diet-derived pigments (carotenoids from berries). Birds raised on non-red berries can develop orange tail-tips instead of yellow — a measurable shift from an introduced honeysuckle species across the eastern U.S. in recent decades.

Fun facts

• Waxwings can live on an all-fruit diet for months — rare among North American birds.
• Their flock coordination is remarkable — dozens of birds swirl together and land in unison on a single tree.
• They're one of the latest-nesting songbirds in North America — some pairs still have eggs in August.
• Oldest known wild Cedar Waxwing: 8+ years.