Date: 4/5/26 10:38 am From: Don Morrow <donaldcmorrow...> Subject: [NFLbirds] Waxwings and Tuliptrees
I was birding at Klapp-Phipps Park, walking along a bottomland forest trail
and hoping for April migrants. Leafout is complete and birds were calling
from within the canopy; Red-eyed Vireos, Northern Parulas and Tufted
Titmice. The thick foliage is delightful, but conceals and I was seeing
little. Then, I noticed lots of movement in the top of a tuliptree. It was
a flock of about forty Cedar Waxwings. Their flocks are always in motion,
moving within their feeding tree and often from there to a nearby tree to
rest for a few moments before heading back to feed again. If they are
around, they’re easy to spot.
Cedar Waxwings are irruptive, nomadic migrants and show a seasonal change
in feeding habits. They eat caterpillars and flying insects when they are
up North and slowly shift their diet in the summer as fruits develop. When
we see them, from late Fall through Spring, their diet is almost
exclusively fruit. In North Florida, Laurel Cherry, Mistletoe, Black Gum,
Sugarberry and Cabbage Palm provide the bulk of their diet, but I have seen
them feeding on another half dozen species of trees, shrubs, and vines.
Lately, they’ve been feasting on the red berries of the decorative hollies
around town.
So, I was surprised to see them swarming the tuliptree. Waxwings will eat
seeds and I have seen both waxwings and cardinals feeding on the
cone-shaped seedheads of tuliptrees in mid-winter, but by late winter,
tuliptree seeds are usually gone, either eaten or having fallen off. In
early April these trees are in flower with three-inch wide tulip-shaped
blossoms that are pale creamy-yellow with orange splotches. It is the
ovaries at the base of the flower that will develop into a seedhead by the
end of summer.
Seeing the waxwings in the tuliptree, I assumed that they were searching
for leftover seeds. The woody bases of tuliptree seedheads persist into
Spring and this tree still had a number of them on its branches. However,
when I looked more closely, I saw that they were ignoring the remaining
seedheads and were going for the tuliptree’s flowers. Doing some research,
I have found that for a short period in Spring when waxwings have depleted
the available wild fruit supply, half of the diet of waxwings may be
comprised of flowers, which “present unique and important seasonal
nutrients for waxwings.”
Most flowering trees, like haw, fringe tree, red buckeye and dogwood, are
small understory trees. However, some like tuliptree are canopy trees,
large trees with concomitantly large flowers, which are apparently an
important short-term food resource for Cedar Waxwings in Spring.
So, a Cedar Waxwing activity that seemed fruitless was actually aimed at
flowers. I am a curious naturalist and have been wandering around for many
years, but I still find things new to me almost every time I go outside.
