Cedar Waxwings

For days now, on my way home from work, I have been hearing this wheedly little cheeping coming from the flowering cherry trees. Some flock of birds going "Wheat, Wheat, WHEEEEET, Cream of Wheat, Wil Wheaton, WHEEEEEEEE!"

It's Cedar Waxwings.

They look so cool. With their spiky hair and little bandit masks, they're like the Bird Pirate Roberts, or something.


They have other cool accessories too, like this awesome yellow tail stripe. The yellow color can be influenced by diet; some birds that eat a certain non-native berry get red tail stripes.

I took about a thousand pictures on "burst" mode and I got this nice surprise view of the tail stripe:
Another diet-based measure of health and robustness is in the wing feathers, which have these carotenoid filled red dots on them. Supposedly this looks like sealing wax (hence the name "waxwing") but apparently the dots are actually a modified part of the central vane of the feather. What are these red dots for? You mean BESIDES looking AWESOME? It is apparently a source of some speculation, but this article suggests that the birds add dots as they age, and thus they can look at each others' wings to avoid getting a crush on a Waxwing Lolita.

If humans could live on a mostly-fruit diet, I bet we'd have cool stripes on us too! In fact, I'm going to go eat some berries RIGHT NOW. Here's hoping.