Bohemian Waxwing

The Bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) is a distinctive boreal songbird breeding from Scandinavia across northern Eurasia and into Alaska and north-western Canada. Adults are about 18–21 cm long and weigh around 58 g. The plumage is soft grey-brown with a prominent crest, black eye-mask and throat, a yellow tail tip and rich rufous undertail coverts. The wings carry bold black, yellow and white markings, and many adults have small red, wax-like tips on some secondary feathers that give the waxwing family its English name.

Compared with the North American cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum), the Bohemian waxwing is larger, has rufous undertail coverts and shows stronger white and yellow patterning in the wings. Its high, fine trilling calls are often the first sign of a flock passing overhead.

Breeding habitat is mainly open boreal conifer forest and mixed taiga, often near wetlands, clearings or other areas where flying insects are abundant. The species breeds at comparatively low density and can shift its breeding distribution between years.

Outside the breeding season waxwings become much less tied to forest. They follow fruit crops through woodland edges, farmland, parks, gardens and towns, where rowan, crab apple and other berry- or fruit-bearing trees can attract large flocks. Ornamental plantings can therefore make urban areas important feeding habitat in some winters.

Bohemian waxwings are strongly specialised on fruit outside the breeding season. Rowan berries are especially important in northern Europe, but the birds also take juniper berries, hawthorn, crab apples and many other fleshy fruits. Their wide gape allows fruit to be swallowed whole, and a large flock can strip a heavily laden tree rapidly.

During the breeding season the diet shifts strongly toward insects, many of them caught in flight. This provides the protein required by growing young. The strong seasonal change from insect feeding in summer to fruit feeding in autumn and winter is closely linked to the species’ large-scale movements.

Fermented fruit can genuinely intoxicate waxwings. A case report published in 2000 described 16 Bohemian waxwings and one pine grosbeak that had fed on fermented crab apples and became severely uncoordinated before striking windows. Alcohol was detected in both the fruit and blood from the birds. Collision trauma was the immediate cause of death, but intoxication clearly contributed.

Bohemian waxwings are irruptive migrants rather than birds with a fixed annual route and wintering area. Their winter distribution can change dramatically from year to year as flocks track uneven fruit crops, producing occasional “waxwing winters” when large numbers appear hundreds or thousands of kilometres south of the breeding range.

A study published in 2023 used up to 41 years of data from northern and western Europe to examine these invasions. Large winter numbers were often associated with abundant rowan crops in northern areas during autumn. When rowan crops in Finland were poor, birds tended to move south earlier, while later movements also depended on when the northern berries ran out. The pattern is therefore more complex than berry failure simply pushing birds south, and birds arriving from populations farther east in Russia may contribute to some of the largest invasions.

Breeding begins comparatively late in spring. Both sexes gather twigs, grasses, moss and other plant material, but the female builds the substantial cup nest in a tree, usually in coniferous woodland. A typical clutch contains about five eggs, with 4–6 common. The female incubates for roughly 13–14 days.

Both parents feed the chicks, which remain in the nest for about 15–17 days before fledging. One brood is usual. Breeding density can vary considerably between years across the remote boreal forests where the species nests.

The Bohemian waxwing is classified as least concern on the IUCN Red List. It has a vast circumpolar range, and its wide-ranging movements cause large year-to-year changes in local abundance.

In the 2025 update from the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme, the European breeding index was 89% higher across the available long-term series and 21% higher in 2015–2024. For this species the long-term series begins later than 1980, so the 89% figure does not cover the full 1980–2024 period used for many other species.

Large annual fluctuations and shifting breeding areas can make local counts difficult to interpret, but the species is not currently considered globally threatened.