We have reached day three of Project Chekov and to switch it up just a little we have two birds featured today (yeah!). To be completely honest, the second one was kind of thrown in because I figured it was a good way to get them out of the way quickly. But let’s get to that in a minute and get right into the featured bird. I Actually thought this would be a new bird to the blog, however, a quick verification through the blog search capability proved differently. The Cedar Waxwing actually made its presence known back in Nov 2012 (link here). Those previous shots were not exactly the best execution and even coined the term crispiless to acknowledge that they were on the fuzzy side (I still like that word). These first few turned out a lot better in my humble opinion.
The above one is clearly my favorite with the berry in the beak. These are one of the easier birds to identify thanks to their thick black eye eyeliner and cropped back Mohawk. Just call them the punk rockers of the birding world. There are actually two types of these birds, one being Cedar and the other the Bohemian. Unfortunately, there isn’t a shot showing their back coloring or it would be very obvious since the Bohemian has more colorful highlights. The Bohemian also hangs out predominantly in the Northwest where the Cedar has a much broader range.
Pretty confident this is the Cedar based on where it was taken (Midwest) and I would have noted it if I saw the prettier highlights so I could make the extra check mark in the bird list. These are pretty cool birds
Hit the jump to see more shots of the Waxwing and a more common bird to the area
Life Intrigued 