Japanese Waxwing

How to identify

Field marks

1. Rose-red terminal patches on the tail feathers
2. Slender, tufted crest on the crown
3. Black eyestripe and black throat
4. Bright chestnut undertail-coverts

Voice

Faint, continuous calls, with high-pitched trills; no true song.

Similar species

Bohemian Waxwing

Bohemian Waxwing is slightly larger, with a yellow rather than red tail tip, and lacks reddish-brown barring on the wings.

Where and when it's recorded

Japanese Waxwing has been recorded at 277 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 5 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Beijing Botanical GardenChina152 records
2. Karuizawa – Karuizawa Wild Bird SanctuaryJapan99 records
3. Tsinghua UniversityChina87 records

Countries and regions with the most records

ChinaJapanSouth KoreaPhilippinesRussia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The Japanese waxwing (Bombycilla japonica) is a fairly small passerine bird in the waxwing family found in the eastern Palaearctic, where it breeds south of the breeding range of the related Bohemian waxwing, but overlaps extensively with it in winter. It feeds mainly on fruit and berries but also eats insects during the summer. The nest is a cup of twigs lined with grass and moss which is built in a tree.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

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