Couldn’t Eat Another Bite…by Brad Marks

Howdy everyone! As noted in my last post, I am officially home from our excursion through the West. There have been moments of pure happiness throughout my life, beating our competitors in the solid modeling innovation realm, passing my 9 hour multi-discipline second degree black belt certifications, crossing the 50 mile finish line for the first time and more recently, getting a good nights sleep in my own bed after two months of living in a tin can – that was aided by a late night run I was able to get in before that to jump start the humidity conditioning. Unfortunately, now having to harvest my yard, get the woods beat back into submission and deal with every critter in the neighborhood that decided to take advantage of my absence sigh. While I deal with the homestead entropy, Brad is going to step in to keep you entertained with another of their adventures from the absolute opposite direction from our recent travels. This also gives my brother Ron some extra time to work on a video I think you are going to like. I would like to thank you folks for kindly dropping in, set a spell, take your shoes off, you all come back now (link here).

Take it away Brad…

This is the second time I have tried to write this story.  The first time, as brilliant as it was, seemed to disappear when my PC restarted itself during a mandatory update and set my story back to a nearly blank document that was several days old, even after being saved multiple times in the meantime.  I checked the backups and they only had the version from the prior days before I did very much writing.  I have auto-save turned on, but there was some sort of kerfuffle between my PC and my backup software.  Not sure Windows 11 is being my friend at the moment.  I’ll try to recreate the facts as best as I can remember them.  Trust me, the first version was a brilliant rendition of our visit, truly Pulitzer worthy.  Hehehe

Jan and I were on one of our annual trips to escape a week of February weather in Illinois.  We like the Hilton Head area in South Carolina that time of year.  Temperatures along the Atlantic Ocean are just enough warmer that we don’t need parkas, but not so warm we need short sleeves and sunscreen all the time.  There seems to be a sweet spot right before the Spring Break throngs descend on the area and precisely when the hotels are deeply discounted.  Yet not so early that state parks and activities aren’t available.  We still see gators all over, but they haven’t really warmed up for summer levels of activity, thankfully.  And I think I’ve finally figured out most of the roads we use and which traffic lane to use in the round-abouts.  This is certainly not meant to be an advertisement, but if someone from the Hilton Head Bureau of tourism wants to sponsor future trips . . . just sayin’.

One of our favorite gems to visit is Wigeon Point Preserve, about 30 minutes away from Hilton Head towards Port Royal.  I think Ted Jennings may have guided us to this location in the past, thanks Ted.  It can be tricky to find while driving as there is precious little signage, and no separate right turn lane.  The preserve is on a bend in the road between bridges spanning two large marshy areas.  At the risk of making the preserve much more popular, we are usually the only people there.

Remembering that the park entrance sneaks up quickly at highway speeds, I slowed down and signaled to make the turn into the parking lot.  This time, there was just one other car in the lot, but they were already headed to the trails.  The couple was walking a new puppy who was rather excited to be in the middle of nature.  We could hear the puppy proclaiming its joy as it romped along the trails.  When we couldn’t hear the puppy, we could track its progress by the clouds of birds flying up from the trees wherever it went.  At this point, we realized there would be no birds to photograph unless we waited several minutes for them to return to their perches.  Or took a different path through the preserve, which is precisely what we did.  If the crowds go left, go to the right, or vice versa.  This strategy has served us well at various Disney parks.

Imagine you just heard an extremely high pitched twill, the calling card of today’s featured feathered friend. “Wax on” the jump button to learn more about this rather dapper find.

Once the cameras were assembled, Jan and I headed into the preserve.  OK, in reality, Jan was already well down the path by the time I had my camera ready and the rental car locked up.  A few feet past the first viewing platform, there is a small bridge just before the trail splits left or right.  Knowing the puppy had headed to the left (based on the clouds of birds flying away), Jan and I made the turn to the right.  Something in the Cabbage Palmetto tree (or Sabal palmetto if you prefer) at the trail split caught our attention and made the tree look like it was moving.

The tree wasn’t really moving; it was swamped with birds eating the bounty of cabbage berries available.  The birds were Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum).  We have Cedar Waxwings at home, so this bird is not a +1 for us.  Well, actually it is if you can only count birds when they are alive.  All I ever see are the ones that have tried to pass through the basketball backboard on our driveway, about one per year.  It’s the only bird species near us that hasn’t figured out how to fly around the glass backboard.

I stopped for a moment to enjoy the scene while not looking through the camera viewfinder.  All too often, all of my memories come through the viewfinder.  I find it a nice change to actually look at the scene to soak it in.  There was a faint hum of traffic on the highway behind us, even though it was a couple hundred yards away.  There was also a very slight breeze in the air.  A light overcast bathed the scene in an even light.  And I hear Jan’s camera clicking away.  Back to reality and the story.

The Cedars were swallowing the cabbage berries whole.  I thought maybe they would crunch them first, but no.  Technically, cabbage berries are seeds with a thin sweet fleshy covering similar to the wild cherries in my back yard, or what my father-in-law calls “choke cherries”.  I wonder how many cabbage berries a Cedar Waxwing can hold.  This question is sort of along the lines of how many swallows does it take to carry a coconut, regardless if they grip it by the husk or not.  Can an African swallow carry more than a European swallow…?  (Does that qualify for bonus points Brian? – yes, but that was subtle ha!)   I suppressed a smile and started taking more photos.

Never having seen a Cedar Waxwing alive before, I had a moment of doubt if it might, indeed, be a Bohemian Waxwing.  Let’s compare.  At first glance they look similar, but there are a few key differences in color.  The first differences are the breast and under tail colors.  Cedars have white under-tail feathers while the Bohemian has cinnamon or rusty colored feathers.  Belly feather color is another strong indicator.  Cedars have pale yellow belly feathers while Bohemians have grey feathers.  Thankfully, with these indicators you don’t need the two side by side.

Their overall body color is also helpful, but in low light may be a bit tougher.  Cedars – brownish, Bohemian – greyish.  Their “masks” are a bit different, too.  Cedars have a slightly wider white trim around their mask as compared with the Bohemian frugal white outline.  They both have bright yellow tips on their tails and red highlights on their wings.  Bohemians are ever so slightly larger and rounder, but unless they are side by side, size might not help differentiate.  Their northern territories overlap by just a smidgen, but their ranges do not overlap at all in South Carolina so ID wasn’t much of a problem, even for me.

Though I didn’t see any tiny red Solo cups around, I could imagine a bit of Berry-Pong happening between these two birds. 

Back to one of my original questions:  How many cabbage berries can a Cedar Waxwing eat?  I don’t know.  A lot is the correct answer.  The group of Waxwings we found stripped this tree bare in a few minutes.  There may have been a dozen birds and a couple hundred berries.  If I divide an estimated 200 berries by 12 birds I get just over 16 cabbage berries per bird.  I’d hate to have my car nearby when they have completely digested their buffet.  Wigeon Point Preserve contains a mix of pine-hardwood and maritime forest trees, meaning pines, oaks and palms.   There are a fair amount of Cabbage Palm trees nearby that attracted the “ear-full” of waxwings we were seeing.  If a group of Waxwings are causing a ruckus and chattering they are called an “ear-full”.  If the waxwings are sitting around quietly looking rather stately, they are referred to as a “museum”.

Eating that many berries must impact a bird’s flight profile and aerodynamics.  This normally svelte Waxwing appeared to have eaten a few too many berries, making it look rather large and lumpy.  It must have been working on a bit of digestion before taking off again.  I can imagine the discussion that was going on with the other birds nearby, paraphrased of course.

     Bird 1 – And finally, a mint?

     Bird 2 – I couldn’t eat another bite. Bugger off. 

     Bird 1 – Oh, but it’s wafer-thin monsieur.

     Bird 3 hurries over with a small silver tray

     Bird 2 – Better bring me a bucket.

That was our signal to keep things moving by continuing our walk around the preserve.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Cedar Waxwing photos, please visit here. 

Credits:

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for many of the photos in this story.