[cobirds] Wondering about Waxwings

Hi CoBirders,

The Bohemian Waxwing is having a major eruption now in the Denver Metro area and elsewhere along the Front Range.  eBird shows BOWA has periodic irruptions of varying degrees here (but not always at the same season); most seasons they are missing or rare. Looking at eBird data for the Front Range counties, the last eruption year with a comparable winter frequency of occurrence to right now was in 2008. There have been some lesser Bohemian appearances in the intervening years, but often not peaking in early January.

Since BOWA is numerous, I wondered how the Cedar Waxwing was doing compared to "normal", as there seem to be lots of reports of them, too. I looked at eBird for the Denver Metro area and the Front Range counties from Larimer to El Paso. You can view parameters for five-year periods for a single species. Shown here are graphs for Frequency (left) and for Abundance (right) for Cedar Waxwing in 2019 to 2023. (The line for 2023 is only a few weeks long, so the rest of the year just looks flat-lined on the charts.) 

(left hand graph) Cedar is far more frequently detected now than in the prior four Januaries, and looking back at still earlier years I see no other peaks as high as now for frequency of occurrence in winter, a time when the species is usually not particularly frequent (note the breeding season is the usual peak for CEDW frequency). 

(right hand) Cedar is more abundant than the other recent Januarys, and the numbers now are at a peak comparable to the highest peaks in the other years. Interestingly, the peak numbers in other years are spread from fall to early spring. 

David Suddjian

Ken Caryl Valley

Littleton, CO

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