The Backyard Science group regularly features the Daily Bucket. We hope you will add your own observations of the world around you. Flowers blooming? Berries ripening? Please tell us about it. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds, squirrel problems, and more are all worthy additions to the Bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, your location. Your impressions support our efforts to understand the enchanting cycles of life that are quietly evolving around us.
Millienia ago, a barn swallow gave birth to a mutant, with a squared tail. All prior swallows had long V-shaped extensions on their tail feathers. The new fledging, however, had a tail with a squared off ending. Nonetheless, it could fly faster than its brother and sister swallows. Thus, this square-tailed swallow was cocky.
One day, as the square-tail was cruising for insects to eat. a watching crow approached.
“Hello, friend,” The crow began, “Are you new in the meadow? I can tell you how to get along out here. I like those waxy red drops on your wingtips. Can I call you Waxy?”
The square-tailed swallow puffed out its chest feathers. “Who are you to speak down to me,” the swallow responded to the crow, ”I am pretty and streamlined, while you are drab and dark. Please call me the Adonis of the sky.” Truth be told, the swallow's feathers were a lovely blend of grey and blue pastels.
The crow became very angry at that criticism of its appearance. The crow was proud and vain of how the subtle greens and blues reflected from its own glossy black feathers. For a second it pondered sounding the “all-crows” call, summoning all nearby crows to harass and peck this arrogant newcomer to death.
Instead, the crow smirked to itself and said, ”Well, please take a little advice. Stay away from the Salish Sea, and if you do go, never turn your back on the Salish Sea.”
Waxy responded by flitting away, snatching a mosquito from mid-air in an acrobatic move even the crow had to admire.
The crow’s words sunk in though, and the next morning Waxy set out to the north for the Salish Sea. “I won’t take advice off some crow, no sir,” thought Waxy. Its furious short bursts of speed between feasts on any available berries, combined with favorable winds, brought Waxy to the Salish Sea shore that evening by dusk.
“And just to spite the crow,” thought Waxy, ”I’ll turn my back to the Salish Sea while I sleep on the beach tonight.” And he did.
But that night, the Salish Sea churned shorewards with colored water, turned orangeish-yellow by a blooming mixture of microscopic critters and yellow pine pollen. Some call it the “tomato-soup bloom,” and it usually happens early every summer, as the crow knew.
The vivid bloom washed up on the sleeping bird, and combined with Waxy’s natural coloring, it stained the bottom two inches of Waxy’s tail feathers a bright yellow.
“Oh my goodness!” cried Waxy, upon awakening and seeing his dyed tail.
“HA HA, I mean caw, caw,” laughed the crow, who’d come to see Waxy’s humiliation.
About that time, a female square tailed swallow flew up.
“Wow, nice tail,” she said to Waxy.
Waxy had never met a female of his species before. He stole a glance at the glowing play of colors from her breast feathers. Waxy felt funny, as if he’d eaten fermented berries.
“Oh, Hi, what’s your name,” he managed to choke out.
“ I like to be called the Athena of the skies,” she replied, ”Going my way?” And Athena and Waxy flew off and made a life together.
Their offspring, for millenia, all sported the dyed tail tip color the Salish Sea had given to Waxy. The male features more yellow than the female, as a reminder that it was Waxy’s male contrary behavior that led to the colored tail.
And that’s the story of how the Cedar Waxwing acquired an inch or two of yellow color on the tip of its tail.
And here’s the story of the story. Just after I read Oceandiver’s fine diary on the colored blooms in the Salish Sea, I identified the beautifully colored cedar waxwing at a nearby pond. Its vividly yellow-tipped tail looked as if it had been dipped in paint, or perhaps, I thought, in the Salish Sea.
Bombycilla Cedrorum is a passerine bird, like swallows. The flock I am observing mingles with the swallows and blackbirds in that popular vertical habitat, an acres-large stand of tall, pond-side cattails. They are eating lots of bugs at the moment, but several studies state they prey heavily on berries.
The waxwings are not territorial and do not fight other birds for a share of the habitat.
If you were able to get close enough, you might see that the red marks on their wing tips appear waxy. Scientists are not certain of the purpose of those waxy secretions, but (like so much else) think it's related to attracting a mate.
"Green Diary Rescue" is Back!