Having a Hitchcock movie in my yard, The Birds

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I have feeders out and get a lot of cardinals and other birds. There is a black mass of what I call raiders (probably starlings or grackels of some kind) that come in by the thousands and clean out the feeders in a few minutes.

But this is about something I've never seen. These are small, about the size of a sparrow, maybe a bit larger. Grey-ish brown, yellow tint to underbellies, yellow accent on tail feathers, tuft on back of head, black mask around the eyes. They are swarming a Cedar tree by the hundreds. So many you can hear they fly off from quite a ways away. The three has ... errr .. had, large clusters of small blue-grey berries, maybe some kind of juniper berry. Thery are now all but gone, with these birds coming back in to finish off the rest. They're skittish and fly off at any noise or movement, but would fly back while I was standing close by if I was still enough. Crappy phone pictures zoomed is as much as I could, so not real clear.

 

[lxskllr]

Cedar waxwing

edit:
and you should try some cedar berries(cones). They taste good. It's actually a juniper, and not a true cedar.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Yeah, that's them:

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

This is sort of what I was seeing:

"Outside the breeding season, cedar waxwings often feed in large flocks numbering hundreds of birds. "


"Cedar waxwings eat berries and sugary fruit year-round, including dogwood, serviceberry, cedar, juniper, ..."

Cedar waxwing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I looked out a few minutes ago and they're gone. They either got their fill for now, or cleaned the tree off.

 

[highland145]

Same here. It's not spring yet, bitches. Anyway, they shit all over my sidewalk. Had to hose it off so I wouldn't track it in the house.

 

[sdifox]

Don't go outside! The berries are just appetizers, you are the main dish!