Irruption Kings
BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends (ISBN: 978-0-7267-8755-5)
by
Budd Titlow
Flocks of cedar waxwings descending en masse on berry-bearing bushes might be considered a plague, if the birds weren’t so incredibly beautiful.
I’ll never forget my first experience with these elegantly colored and boldly patterned birds with their almost imperceptibly high-pitched whistles, typically sounded in unison by multiple birds—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee—bzeeee.
It was a very cold February morning. A flock of at least fifty birds came swooping in on the northeast wind and landed in the top of a crabapple thicket near our eastern Massachusetts home. They picked all the branches clean in less than fifteen minutes. Then, just as suddenly as they came in, they all lifted upward and darted off as a small dark cloud in search of more berry bushes to devour. Cold weather places a tremendous burden on a bird’s metabolism, especially when they spend all their time jetting around in huge feeding flocks.
During the winter months, Cedar Waxwings—traveling in large flocks—can glean all the leftover berries on a tree or shrub in a matter of minutes.
There is a special word that describes the sudden arrival of large numbers of the same species of bird, like flocks of cedar waxwings. This word is “irruption”—ir, not er.
Sometimes irruptions involve a species that is relatively common to an area, but mostly they involve unexpected birds that are seldom seen in the local vicinity. According to the website About.com, an irruption is defined as “a dramatic, irregular migration of large numbers of birds to an area where they aren’t typically found, possibly at great distances from their normal ranges.”
The most common cause of winter irruptions is a lack of food in the birds’ normal ranges. Songbirds, like cedar waxwings, may irrupt when berry crops in their home territories are poor, while a raptor species may irrupt when preferred prey populations are low. Unduly harsh winter weather may also induce irruptions in bird populations to move further south into areas where they are otherwise seldom seen.
Some years ago, a major irruption of great gray owls occurred when hundreds of these massive predators moved as one from their common wintering grounds in northern Canada and Alaska down to the northern tier of the United States. Word of this phenomenon caused an equally amazing irruption in the nature photography world, as hundreds of photographers armed with super-telephoto lenses suddenly showed up in Minnesota, North Dakota, Michigan, and New York in the dead of winter.
Cedar waxwings are named for the bright red slashes on their wings that look like wax droplets. They have a reputation for gluttony, with many birders reporting seeing waxwings over-consuming fermented berries until they become so inebriated that they either fall helpless to the ground or fly directly into the walls of buildings and knock themselves out. In both cases, the drunken birds are easy pickings for house cats, red foxes, and other ground predators. As we so often see with human celebrities, being really good-looking doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to do the right things for your health.
Text excerpted from book: BIRD BRAINS: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends, written by Budd Titlow and published by Lyons Press (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press).
Author’s bio: For the past 50 years, professional ecologist and conservationist Budd Titlow has used his pen and camera to capture the awe and wonders of our natural world. His goal has always been to inspire others to both appreciate and enjoy what he sees. Now he has one main question: Can we save humankind’s place — within nature’s beauty — before it’s too late? Budd’s two latest books are dedicated to answering this perplexing dilemma. PROTECTING THE PLANET: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, a non-fiction book, examines whether we still have the environmental heroes among us — harking back to such past heroes as Audubon, Hemenway, Muir, Douglas, Leopold, Brower, Carson, and Meadows — needed to accomplish this goal. Next, using fact-filled and entertaining story-telling, his latest book — COMING FULL CIRCLE: A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America — provides the answers we all seek and need.Having published five books, more than 500 photo-essays, and 5,000 photographs, Budd Titlow lives with his music educator wife, Debby, in San Diego, California.
This Birding Life 