Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Cedar Waxwings


Cedar Waxwing
Originally uploaded by camden hackworth.
One of the highlights of this spring was the visit we received from a flock of cedar waxwings. The showed up one day looking like masked bandits and parked themselves in the bare limbs of our neighbor's Little Leaf Linden tree. A couple times a day they swept in to devour the barries on and under our holly tree. Within a week, most of the berries were off the ground. Gorged on sugar, the flocked moved on.

(Our camera died so I'm borrowing this image from a fine Flickr fan.)

Before this visit, my only association with waxwings was from the opening lines of the epic poem in Vladimir Nabokov's meta novel Pale Fire. I went around repeating it for weeks:

I am the shadow of the waxwing, slain
By the false azure of the window pane.


Nobody got fooled by our windows. I'm looking forward to next year's visit.

2 comments:

  1. Nice post, nice photo (thanks, Flickr), but more importantly, you've read Pale Fire? I assume, like me, it was under torture during college days. :)

    .. Would be interested in a reciprocal blog link. Let me know.

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  2. Last week, we had yellow finches which we never had before. And new this week a couple of Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks showed up. Sweet!

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