Cedar Waxwings Playing

This Saturday Palmer Lake park was covered in just a fine dusting of snow, the kind that doesn't really even cover the ground, settling only between the blades of grass. It was overcast and gray and late enough in the year to get my hopes up of seeing an Owl soon. My first sighting however was of a single Doe on the north side about 10 minutes before the bridge over Shingle Creek. She wasn't too interested in me and kept moving along. On the northeast corner of the park is a thick stand of trees, shrubs and vines that always attract a good variety of birds. Today it was a small flock of Cedar Waxwings and I ventured in to woods finding myself right underneath them. They were everywhere I turned my camera, but shooting upwards into the sky was giving me very poor results. The Waxwings were active as heck, plucking and downing berries like crazy from the Buckthorn trees. At one point, I spotted two of them interacting closely above me. One picked a berry and passed it to the other, making my wonder at first if it was feeding a younger one. But to my surprise, the bird passed it back again. They continued passing it back and forth a few more times before the one gulped it down. I can only guess that they were playing, or maybe it was some sort of sign of affection. A pretty interesting sight!