February is cedar waxwing month in my neighborhood. The silken sleek birds wearing black masks outlined in white show up in flocks to devour the berries on many shrubs and trees, often around Valentine’s Day. Flocking is an efficient strategy for birds to find and exploit ample food sources. Multiple eyes find far more food than a single bird. Flocks have safety in numbers since predators like hawks are less likely to take on a group.

Gardeners can get cues from these winter residents as to what to plant to keep them coming back year after year.

Hedges of evergreen photinia are common property boundaries. The ‘red tip’ new leaf growth and cluster of red berries make for an attractive shrub provided fungal leaf spot, Entomosporim maculatum, a severe problem for Photinia glabra and P. frazier, is controlled through cultural practices.

Wax myrtle, Myrica cerifera, is an excellent native shrub for any soil type. The fragrantly spicy leaves, branches and berries of this evergreen grow quickly to 15 to 20 feet high and wide, and is tolerant of pruning. Flocks of waxwings chug down the blue-grey berries.

Cedar waxwings feast on crabapples. Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, berries await many frugivorous birds including waxwings.

As far as the cedar waxwing are concerned there is no limit to the berries it can consume. Fruit is their main diet for seven months of the year. These voracious feeders are famous for overindulging. Flocks have been observed to deplete the blue-gray berries on eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana, in a couple of days. In fact, their fondness for the fruit led to their common name.

Berries are so impor- tant to waxwings that the monogamous pair may delay mating until the end of summer when the inventory of berries is assured to be abundant. Both parents feed their young whole berries regurgitated from their crop.

Waxwings swallow berries whole. Although the breeding ground for waxwings is southern Canada, they migrate south to spend the winter eating berries.

What other plants can be offered on the menu? Most certainly the hollies are a treasure for many birds. The gray horizontal branches of the deciduous holly, Ilex decidua, are coated in red berries until the birds and small mammals arrive.

The southeastern native possumhaw viburnum, Viburnum nudum, provides clusters of reddish-pink to blue berries.

Disease resistant crabapples like Malus sargentii offer a compact tree maturing to 6-8 feet tall and packed with dangling clusters of red berries.

While at one end cedar waxwings and other frugivorous birds like bluebirds, mocking birds, robins and orioles are downing berries, these birds are gardening their way by dispersing and distributing seeds from the other end.

Deciduous Malus sargentii, crabapple, is heavily berried. This February plant a berry tree or shrub as a Valentine for waxwings.

Evergreen Ilex vomitoria 'Pendula' contains masses of berries in winter.