A winter visitor to Japan with a red tail tip.
It has a soft vinous body, long crest, black eye stripe and a red tail tip.
Japanese Waxwings are familiar winter visitors in Japan, but their breeding season is much less often seen. In 2025, researchers confirmed summering and nesting sites in Nogliki District on Sakhalin, and described the first nests documented on Sakhalin Island. They recorded nest form and surrounding habitat, adding evidence about how the birds breed there.
The flocks seen in Japan during winter and the breeding season in Russia’s Far East belong to one annual cycle. Linking winter sightings with summer nest records makes the species’ seasonal use of distant places easier to map.
IUCN Red List · Near Threatened (NT) · Global species-level assessment
BirdLife International’s 2018 IUCN global assessment lists the Japanese Waxwing as Near Threatened (NT). The Sakhalin nest record documents a breeding site; it does not show a change in the global population.