WAXWING, a bird (Bombycilla garrulus), the type of the Passerine family Ampelidae.
It is distinguished from almost all other birds by the curious expansion of the shaft of some of its wing-feathers at the tip into a flake that looks like scarlet sealing-wax. An irregular winter visitant, sometimes in countless hordes, to central and southern Europe, it was of old time looked upon as the harbinger of war, plague or death. The waxwing, though breeding yearly in some parts of northern Europe, is as irregular in the choice of its summer quarters as in that of its winter retreats. The species exhibits the same irregular habits in America. It has been found in Nebraska in "millions," as well as breeding on the Yukon and on the Anderson river.
Beautiful as is the bird with its full erectile crest, its cinnamon brown plumage passing in parts into grey or chestnut, and re lieved by black, white and yellow —all of the purest tint—the ex ternal feature which has invited most attention is the "sealing wax" already mentioned. This is
nearly as much exhibited by the kindred species, B. cedrorum, the cedar-bird or cedar waxwing, of North America, which is distin guished by its smaller size, the yellower tinge of the lower parts and the want of white on the wings. In B. japonica, of south eastern Siberia, and Japan, the remiges and rectrices are tipped with red, but with no dilatation of the feather shafts. Both the waxwing and cedar-bird seem to live chiefly on insects in summer, but are addicted to berries during the rest of the year, and will gorge themselves if oppor tunity allow.