Tom Foote shared with us,

>by a friend in N. Carolina

> On my way into work today, I took a detour to observe a flock
>of cedar waxwings. It was one of the larger flocks I've seen. As I
watched
>them in the top of a birch tree, about one third of the flock flew down to
>a deciduous evergreen bush with red berries still in abundance. Instantly
>from out of the bush flies a mockingbird and chases all the waxwings out
>of its bush. But that wasn't good enough, some of them landed in a nearby
>berry-less, leafless low tree & the mockingbird chased them out of that
>tree as well. The mockingbird was incredibly outnumbered, but that didn't
>matter. One by one it chased them all away, and rather quickly too.

I have a photograph from my days in California of a probably "unhappy"
mockingbird surrounded by a large flock of cedar waxwings, all sitting
in "its" persimmon tree. The mockingbird had tried to defend its treasure
but in the face of several hundred cedar waxwings gave up.

Jerry Tangren
<tangren at wsu.edu>