When you have completely irresponsible waxwing birds lying drunk on the sidewalks...

[highplainsdem]

Link to tweet

Completely irresponsible waxwing birds 🐦🐦🐦 tend to eat fermented fruit and then lie drunk on the sidewalks.

Wise passers-by collect them and put them in a safe place until they sober up.

Found this thanks to a Mastodon post from author Jane Johnson: https://masto.ai/@[e-mail]/109672471261021874

[brush]

1. Glad some are doing interventions on those drunks.

They need to go to rehab asap.

[Diamond_Dog]

2. Don't drink and fly!

[Fla Dem]

4. OMG, too funny.

Hope they revived before a cat or dog got them.

[mopinko]

5. robins are known to do this, too.

funny. gotta assume they know what they’re doing. otherwise, they’d do it once, yes?

[highplainsdem]

8. Quite a few animals, including primates, like overripe fermented fruit.

I've read that the scent of alcohol attracts them, that fermented fruit provides more calories for energy. I don't know if that's been proven, though. And those waxwings don't seem to be using much energy.

If you've ever tried to eat an overripe banana, you know the smell of alcohol is unmistakable.

[mopinko]

9. well, they do say fermented foods are rly good for you.

and yeah, i love brown bananas.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Including elephants, after eating bushels of apples and a few gallons of water.

When you hear that wobbly trumpeting, run the other way as fast as you can !

[Walleye]

6. More than once friends had to put me in a safe place until I sobered up

[yorkster]

7. "My name is Tweety and I'm a fruitaholic.".

[MLAA]

10. I'm calling for a Guinness Book of records largest ever intervention.

[Ocelot II]

11. When I was a kid we had a mountain ash tree in our back yard

and it produced berries that cedar waxwings and robins really liked. Sometimes these birds would get drunk from the berries and sort of flop around instead of really trying to fly. We never saw any of them pass out, but they were obviously wasted.

[Harker]

12. Cedar Waxwings acting like Bohemians. n/t

[RobinA]

14. Good One!!!

[Harker]

16. ...

Here's to you!

[Solly Mack]

13. :)

[2naSalit]

17. Great time to get good pictures!

They're so hard to get good pics from!

I love those birds. A giant flock came and rescued my trees and my cabin from a bark beetle infestation once. I had moved into a cabin with five Siberian Elm trees that were infested, they were getting into the cabin, just nasty. The next spring I started a huge landscaping project and sometime in late May this flock showed up and stayed for about six weeks. When they left, all the beetles were gone, never saw another one for the next five years that I lived there.

It was really sweet having them around all day, I got to watch their mating behaviors and I went to sleep at night hearing their calls in my head. They are really something to watch when you have the chance to observe them in a place they decide to spend more than two minutes.