The general coloration of waxwings is cryptic, that is to say, concealing or blending. The lighter color of the venter, especially of the belly, contrasts with the duller, darker vinaceous color of the dorsum. Several ruptive marks tend to obliterate the outline of the body. The crest of the head, when elevated, tends to elongate the body, making the outline less like that of a normal bird. The facial mask effectively breaks up the outline of the head, and conceals the bright eye, which would otherwise be strikingly distinct. The white spots on the distal ends of the secondaries of _B. garrula_ and the yellow color on the distal ends of the rectrices (red in _B. japonica_) are also ruptive. These ruptive marks on an otherwise blending type of plumage might be important to waxwings, and probably are more effective when the birds remain motionless in either a well-lighted area or in one that is partly in shadow, rather than in one that is wholly in shadow. The red wax tips on the secondaries of the flight feathers, and sometimes found on the ends of the rectrices in _Bombycilla_, are puzzling and no wholly convincing reason has been suggested for their occurrence. Two instances are known of yellow instead of red-colored wax tips in _B. cedrorum_ (Farley, 1924). It is well known that many individuals, especially of _B. cedrorum_, do not possess these tips; they are absent in a smaller proportion of individuals of _B. garrula_. Of the 53 skins of _B. cedrorum_ available in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, which might be taken as a sampling at random of the general population of this species, only 17 possess wax tips. A few specimens are unilateral, and the tips are of varying sizes in different individuals. Of these 17 birds, 6 are female and 7 male, the others being unsexed at the time of skinning. This proportion is, roughly, half and half. Of the seven skins of _B. garrula pallidiceps_ in the same Museum, five possess the tips, and two that are females have no trace of the red tips at all. Of the five which do have the tips, two are males, two are females, and one is unsexed. In a series of 13 specimens of the three subspecies of _B. garrula_, loaned by the United States National Museum, all but two individuals possess the tips on the secondaries, and, in addition, four specimens, equally divided between the two sexes, have color on the rachis of some rectrices, and small appendages of pigment extend beyond the feathers. Stevenson (1882) found that among 144 specimens of _B. garrula garrula_ killed by storms in England in the winter of 1866-67, 69 individuals had wax tips. Of these, 41 were males and 27 were females; the remaining one was of uncertain sex. Among 38 definitely sexed _B. garrula pallidiceps_ in the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Swarth (1922:276) lists tips in 22 males and 16 females. These data indicate that the proportion of birds with the wax tips is higher in _B. garrula_ than in _B. cedrorum_.