I have never given much thought to what birds do at night, except for owls. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in our kitchen counting our feeder birds, when something caught my eye. I looked at a 35' black walnut tree standing by itself in the yard about 40' from the house, and saw a couple CEDAR WAXWINGS in what I thought was an odd posture. Looking carefully, I counted 14 total. The oddity was that this didn't look like the typical waxwing flock high in a tree. The birds were somewhat scattered and appeared to have been stuffed into branch crotches. Several were perched on twigs, but only in a spot where their backs were against a limb surface or another twig. Susie remarked next morning that they looked like they had been jammed into these places. The other odd thing was their total immobility. I first noticed them at 1630 and I watched them carefully until 1800 and could detect no movement, not even eye movement, using the scope. At 1735, a jet went over low, but the birds didn't flinch. It was as if they had entered a cataleptic state. At 1800, I went out to the base of the tree to put down food for our yard bunny; no change in any of the birds' posture.
Observations with binos at 1815, 2300 (strong moonlight), then 0200, 0450, 0545 this morning revealed absolutely no posture changes. Other birds (doves, crows, sparrows) were flying about the yard from 0630 onward, but made no impression. Susie and I continued to watch these frozen birds until 0700, when one suddenly stretched a wing and a leg, and within 15 seconds all were stretching and moving a bit. Susie grabbed the newspaper and noted that the official sunrise today was at 0700 (overcast here). Coincidence? At 0701, 24 more CEDAR WAXWINGS flew into the tree from the east. The flock now assumed a normal appearance (that is, what I would expect a flock of this size to look like perched high in a bare tree). All now began preening. An AMER. CROW flew into the tree a few minutes later and they left, not returning. I think they are a migrant group, as we have seen no waxwings in the area since last Dec. The catalepsy would certainly be of benefit to birds sleeping in the open, as any movement might be detected by an owl. Steve Fast Brooktondale -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
