AS I stood this Christmas watching one of the largest flocks of Bohemian waxwings ever recorded in Derbyshire, I overheard someone say: ‘They are amazing. I wonder if I will ever see something like this again?’ I understood exactly what they meant.
The birds can sit for long minutes in treetops, where they seem stolid, silent and no more exciting than creatures the size and shape of common starlings. Then, suddenly, they erupt, swooping into bushes en masse to feed. In passages of intense activity, they clamber through the thorn, wings opening and closing, tails spread fan-like and strong feet clamping them to the flimsiest of twigs as they
