Animal of the Week January 2, 2011

Hello! 2011, can you imagine that?!

I hope you all had a marvellous Christmas and New Year. Many thanks to mummy Hayward for providing many slain animals for me to get fat on over the Christmas period, to Lucy (where Animal of the Week started) for a whizz-bang new year's eve party, and to Peter for allowing a bunch of gorgeous hot messes into his flat on new year's day. Has Jason slept yet?

In the final days of 2010, the UK was gripped by the icy fingers of winter, causing the country to break down. Planes could not take off, trains could not run, public services collapsed, and my mother broke her leg on some ice as literally centimetres of snow smothered our once great nation. While winter certainly has its downsides, the cold weather provides prime opportunities to see some of our wonderful wildlife with little effort. From the icicle fringed end-terrace of maison Hayward in rural Oxforshire, ma and I watched a couple of roe deer hanging out in the the primary school playing field. The bird feeders in the garden attracted great, blue, and long-tailed tits, dunnocks, chaffinches, robins, and a pied wagtail. The cotoneaster bush and another tree (identity unknown, I am no botanist) laden with fat red berries attracted more blackbirds than you could shake a stick at. Our winter-visiting thrushes were represented by 20 or so redwings and eventually, after much anticipation, a fat fieldfare. But none of these is animal of the week, what could possibly top such a wonderful list of wildlife? This week's animal is Bombycilla garrulus (waxwing).

John Harrison at http://flickr.com/photos/15512543@N04/

Typically just a hundred or so waxwings arrive in the UK from northern Europe in late autumn and early winter, hanging around Scotland and the east coast, eating the red berries of cotoneasters, pyracanthas, and rowans. But in years when they breed very successfully, waxwings can arrive sooner and in much larger numbers; these years are known as explosion years, and 2010 was such a year. Thousands of birds arrived in late October and have spread throughout the country.

Having heard reports of the large number of waxwings and given the combination of snow and heavy loaded fruit trees I was hopeful that I'd see one of these handsome birds. I'd been down for a couple of days a week before just after the first snow (and my mother) fell, but no waxwings then. The trees outside the kitchen window remained resolutely waxwing free as I prepared the ham on Christmas eve, as I stuffed, basted, the turkey, assembled pigs in blankets, boiled the sprouts, and steamed the pudding on the day itself. But then, as I did the washing up, I spotted an unmistakable outline, the impressive crest marking a wonderful bird. I had a chance to get a good sight of the bird, including the bright flashes of yellow, the rosy crest, and the striking wing and tail markings, before the solitary individual was spooked by something and took to the sky with the cloud of redwings. Unlike the redwings, the waxwing didn't return.

I last saw waxwings perhaps more than 20 years ago, then it was a flock of 20 or so birds feeding on trees just down the road from where I spent Christmas. Seeing just one was no less of a treat. If not looking out for waxwings, you might dismiss them casually as the similarly-sized starling, but keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks as they really are lovely birds, and it may be a while before you stand such a good chance of seeing them.