The other day I asked COBIRDS participants to please let me know if they had seen Bohemian Waxwings during the current invasion eat anything other than crabapples, Rocky Mountain juniper cones (berries), common buckthorn fruits and Russian-olives.
The response has been wonderful and here are some new things you have added to our understanding of their diet while in Colorado:
*Kathy Mihm-Dunning observed them at fairly high elevation eating kinnikinnick fruits (which in botanical terms are a "berry-like drupes").
*David Suddjian observed a courting pair passing a Siberian elm flower bud back and forth, which almost certainly one of them, likely the female, ate.
*John Garing and Janice Hill sent me pics that show them eating green ash flower buds. This is something I have seen Cedar Waxwings do and is yet one more instance of the diets of these two species, at least in North America, being almost identical.
*Judd Patterson saw them "make quick work of" old rotten apples both in the tree and on the ground in Fort Collins.
Bohemian Waxwings probably eat fruits of other woody plants like mountain-ash, hawthorn, snowberry, etc., but so far no reports of which I am aware.
Thanks to everybody who shared on this topic. Lots to learn and what's more fun than that? The current buzzphrase is "citizen science" which is what used to be called "bird watching". As Duke's retired basketball Coach K says in a current Aflac commercial, "Who needs championships, when you can watch birds."
Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins
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