We hang our feeder full of Niger seed outside the living room window and within hours the American Goldfinches are jostling for position. The hummingbird feeder never fails to attract our only Northeastern U.S. resident, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. But there is no seasonal miracle quite like the arrival of the distinctive Cedar Waxwings in our single scraggly wild cherry tree. One day I notice a few ripening cherries hanging at eye level (tasty but more pit than flesh) and begin my surveillance, and the next day the driveway is littered with cherrystones and stems as the flock of feathered bandits swoons over their discovery. They hang upside down to get a grip on a cherry, tug on the branch causing the leaves to bob and flutter, hop noisily from branch to branch, and congregate briefly in social groups (though I have never seen them pass cherries from beak to beak as many websites claim they are known to do). Another day and they’ll be off to the next stop on their migration. How do they find us? These cherries do not ripen at the same time as the cultivated ones in local orchards, and I haven’t seen another tree like it in our neighborhood. There probably isn’t enough fruit on our tree each year to make even one cherry pie. You can hardly see the cherries against the bright sky and intensely green leaves when you’re looking directly up at the branches; surely they’d be even more difficult to spot from above. Yet, here they are for that one remarkable day, tolling as reliably as any atomic clock the passage of our years.