With winter on its way out it's worth reflecting on the absence of a stunning winter migrant that didn't make it in any numbers to our shores this year .......

The arrival and number of winter Waxwings gracing our shores annually are dependent on many factors, the main one being the success of the berry harvest in their northern homelands.

Here in Northamptonshire the only heavily reported presence was a single bird in Corby, possibly the most photographed Waxwing in the country !.

What a difference to the winter of 2012 when flocks of one hundred plus were regularly seen in urban environments, funnily enough seeming to favour supermarket car parks with berry laden shrubs like cotoneaster.

This image was taken at Peterborough in 2012,  a veritable Christmas tree decked out with festive baubles.

Will eye be back in numbers this winter ?

                                              
                                                         A bit of a teaser to start with.

Always a welcome visitor to brighten up those cold winter days when the sky is blue and cloudless and thermal clothing is very much a requirement against stiff eastern winds. 

What a splendid bird the Bohemian Waxwing is with its trilling bell like call  

These birds decorate trees like Christmas ornaments.

Winters Past - Waxwing invasion.

I've been tied up a bit recently so I  thought I would dig into the archives and post some shots of one of my favourite winter visitors from our extreme Northern European Latitudes,.

Called Waxwing because the red tips to their secondary flight feathers resemble red sealing wax  ( for those that can remember sealing wax ! ) used for sealing envelopes and documents in bygone years.  

Some winters we maybe have a few hundred visitors spread throughout the UK from around October to April but in exceptional years, reflecting high populations and poor domestic autumn berry crops, eruptions take place and we receive several thousand birds, some flocks can be as large as 700 individuals.

The biggest flock that I have seen personally numbered about one hundred.

These flocks take advantage of our own winter berry crops stripping  trees and shrubs with great enthusiasm and speed, favourite food sources are rowan, whitebeam, hawthorn, cotoneaster and virtually any ornamental berry bearing shrub.

In winter Waxwing need to eat two or three times their body weight each day as berry's are a pretty insubstantial diet.

Attractive and colourful as they are they always remind me of imperious Japanese characters with heavily made up eyes from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Mikado .... or when they raise their crests, members of a punk band.

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