Cedar Waxwing, Forest Grove, Oregon on 21 October 2010 by Greg Gillson.We discussed the adult Cedar Waxwing and how to age it in two previous posts.
The streaky underparts of today's photo and lack of much crest are ample clues for most people to identify this bird as an immature.
The Cedar Waxwing was first described to science in 1808 by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot. And this Frenchman had ample time to collect and describe birds in North America.
You see, Vieillot was on a business trip to Haiti when the French Revolution broke out in 1889. So, being on the wrong side of the new ruling class, he fled to the United States. There he began to study birds.
It was not until a dozen years later Vieillot was able to return to France and start working on his book, Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amérique septentrionale (Natural History of Birds of North America) that he published in 1808. In it was the first description of Cedar Waxwing from eastern North America.
One more waxwing photo is coming with the next post....