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The American Birding Association has designated the cedar waxwing as the 2020 bird of the year. They are also one of my favorite birds with their peach brown color, yellow tail feathers and red tips on their wings that look like they have been dipped in wax.

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Cedar waxwing nests are well hidden. I have seen only one before in my life so when I noticed cedar waxwings building a nest right off our deck I was thrilled. The mother laid one egg each day and started incubating them after the last egg was laid. I imagine she does that so they all hatch on the same day. Which they did.

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It was mostly the mother sitting on the eggs day and night.

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Thirteen days after laying the last egg all four babies hatched.

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For the first few days I only witnessed the dad bringing food while the mom sat on the nest.

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When the food arrived, the mom would stay on the nest until the dad gave her half the food in his mouth.

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Then together they would both feed the babies. One day while watching the nest I didn’t see any adults. A red squirrel came and started to climb up the tree. Red squirrels eat baby birds so I was worried that the squirrel was going to get the babies. The squirrel never knew what hit him. Before he got to the nest both parents came out of nowhere and attacked it with a vengeance. I never saw another squirrel climb that tree.

Our one granddaughter, Addie, took this and the next photo of the pair feeding. At first, they smashed the berries in their mouth so they are easier for the babies to swallow.

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Our granddaughters were visiting at the time so each of them got to watch the adults feeding the babies through the spotting scope. They thought that was pretty neat. I think they will remember that for some time.

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They brought insects and berries. Here you can see that one adult has insects in its mouth and the other has berries. See that the one baby’s mouth is stuffed. Waxwings nest later than most birds so the berries will be ripe when it comes time to feed.

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Four days after hatching they still didn’t have any feathers.

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At seven days the feathers started growing. The feathers grew so fast the difference could be seen each day.

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The adults spent many hours sitting on the nest keeping their babies warm.

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Lots of June berries were consumed. You can see one going down the baby's throat.

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Twenty-nine days after the eggs were laid you can see that they are feathered out and ready to fly.

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They are looking more independent.

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Feeding times were now more frequent. About every fifteen minutes.

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They brought the babies bright red berries every day that I could not identify. I did witness some strange behavior. It looked like the adult was putting berry after berry in the baby’s mouths and I couldn’t believe the adult could have that many berries in their mouth at one time.

I looked at my video again and found out that if the baby didn’t swallow the berry right away the adult took it back out and gave it to another one. At one point it gave one berry to all four babies and sometimes to the same baby twice before it was swallowed. So, it wasn’t a lot of berries in its mouth it was just moving the same berry from baby to baby. If anyone knows why they would do that let me know. It happened often but always with the bright red berries.

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I thought in this photo the four babies resembled a choir singing. I was surprised to find out that even when they are this excited they don’t make any noise. Not like baby woodpeckers. You can hear them hundreds of feet away. I think the nesting birds are quiet so as not to attract predators. Just another everyday miracle.

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This was the first baby to fledge. It flew to the end of the branch and back again several times. Then it flew to the adjacent tree. It was pretty agile for its first flight.

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Shortly two of the others followed. An hour later the last one fledged. It looked back at me one last time before taking off. It kept getting lower and lower as it flew but made it to the next tree. This one wasn’t as agile as the first.

It was an enjoyable month of witnessing a family being raised. Birds bring a lot of happiness to people and in the midst of a pandemic this cedar waxwing family brought joy to our life.

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