{"id":171014,"date":"2026-03-26T06:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=171014"},"modified":"2026-03-26T07:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:30:36","slug":"cedar-waxwings-feeding-on-crabapples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/26\/cedar-waxwings-feeding-on-crabapples\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedar Waxwings Feeding On Crabapples"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early last week I was lucky enough to spend 34 minutes with two small flocks of Cedar Waxwings feeding on crabapples.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The settings were typically busy which often caused shadows to fall on the birds, but the behaviors were interesting and waxwings are beautiful birds so I did the best I could with what I had.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though there were lots of waxwings in several crabapple trees that were adjacent to each other, I seldom got more than one bird in the frame – especially with both birds sharp. This photo is an exception.<\/p>\n

Most of the birds in both flocks were young birds, lacking the red, waxlike tips on the secondary flight-feathers of adult birds. I only noticed two adults in the time I was with them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This late in the year some of the crabapples are still plump but many of them are shriveled and wrinkled. It quickly became apparent that still-plump fruits were right at the margin of the size they could swallow. I watched many waxwings attempt to swallow plump fruits and fail.<\/p>\n

This bird was wise enough to choose a smaller, wrinkled and perhaps less palatable fruit so it…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

had no trouble at all swallowing it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I really missed seeing those distinctive red waxy feather tips on the wings of most of the waxwings but even without them they’re dandy-looking birds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This young waxwing had a smorgasbord of crabapples to choose from and I was immediately excited to see that I might get some acrobatic poses out of the bird as ‘he’ tried to reach one of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I did, but too bad I didn’t get a better catch light in his eye.<\/p>\n

Actually, it turned out that he was only testing this crabapple. He ended up…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

leaving it behind, perhaps because he realized it was too plump to swallow. I like the photo, despite the shadow on his back.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The desiccated and wrinkled crabapple in this bird’s mouth is typical of the ones that were easy to swallow but I had the impression that…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

the waxwings preferred the plump berries if they could get them down. They often couldn’t.<\/p>\n

This bird, one of the few adults I noticed, made many attempts to swallow this fat fruit and failed. You’d think that at his age he’d know better than to even try. In the end ‘he’ disdainfully…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

tossed the fruit up…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and away from him, letting it fall to the ground without making any attempt to catch it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And he wasn’t a quick learner. He immediately leaned over and plucked another plump fruit which he tried to swallow for…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

a very long time. So long that I ended up taking 139 photos of him trying to swallow it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He tossed it in the air multiple times and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

tried to mash it to a smaller size repeatedly, with no luck at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Soon another adult waxwing appeared, apparently to show him how it’s done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But as far as I could tell, neither bird was able to swallow their chosen crabapple. This photo has kind of a wonky composition because I wanted to include the upper right-hand corner for a reason.<\/p>\n

When the original waxwing, the one on the right, took off the stubborn bird…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

took off with the crabapple still in his mouth. We can see the fruit in his mouth but we can’t see his head or his bill.<\/p>\n

All in all it was a challenging and fun session with the waxwings. Until that day I’d only seen two Cedar Waxwings all winter.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early last week I was lucky enough to spend 34 minutes with two small flocks of Cedar Waxwings feeding on crabapples. (19 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,2659],"tags":[7926,7927,311],"class_list":["post-171014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-cedar-waxwings","tag-cedar-waxwings","tag-ornamental-crabapples","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cedar-waxwing-0449-ron-dudley-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Iui","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171014"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171071,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171014\/revisions\/171071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}