Cedar Waxwings at the Bluffs: July 20, 2022

Waxwing numbers are highly unpredictable, here in numbers one day, then gone for days or months. Their voice is a high thin lisp or zeee quite unlike the call you would expect from such a lovely bird.

We saw Waxwings both above and below the Bluffs this morning.

Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing

Other birds:

Rock Pigeon
Mallards
Eastern Kingbird
Ring-billed Gull
Canada Goose
Ring-billed Gulls
Cormorants and Gulls following a school of fish
Mallard (female)
Great Blue Heron
Eastern Kingbird

Bluff scenes:

Some botany:

Dogwood (Cornus)
Willow Pine Cone gall
Black Walnut (Juglans nigra)
Autumn-olive (Elaeagnus umbellata)
Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)
Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
Amur Cork Tree (Phellodendron amurense)
Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)
Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis)
Queen Anne’s-lace (Daucus carota)
Curled Dock (Rumex crispus)
Sandbar Willow (Salix exigua)

Today’s group:

MAILBOX

Hi Miles,

This is fascinating! Turns out we’ve all had it wrong about woodpeckers “absorbing” shocks:

New Study Shakes Up Long-held Belief on Woodpecker Hammering | Audubon

NATURE POETRY

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.               – Dylan Thomas (1914–53)

Miles Hearn

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