Even non-birdwatchers get excited about these distinctive, colourful and famously approachable birds. They usually offer ample opportunity to appreciate their sandy plumage with a full crest, black bib, yellow tips to the tail feathers and white markings in the wings. Even the little red waxy tips to the secondaries can often be seen very well.
A Waxwing is slightly smaller than a Starling. They do not breed in the UK, but are a winter visitor, in some years in larger numbers, called irruptions, when the population on its breeding ground gets too big for the food available. This year is turning out to be one of those years as a mass population have arrived this winter to the UKs shores.
Waxwings mainly eat berries, particularly rowan and hawthorn, but also cotoneaster and rose. You normally hear Waxwings being reported in supermarket car parks, eating the berry trees there. The Waxwing influx that is currently at Fairburn are eating Hawthorn berries down The Cut and apples in a back garden. The photo here shows a Waxwing in a Hawthorn bush down Cut Lane taken on 11th December.
By Joe Seymour