The Bohemian waxwing's range is indeed largely north of Ithaca, NY (or the Ontario related to the "Montario" of the earliest drafts of Pale Fire), but can and has been seen in Ithaca and elsewhere in upstate New York.  Below is a link to a recent photo of Bohemian and Cedar waxwings in the same tree in Ithaca (courtesy of Susan Barnett of Cornell University Press).  I have a short passage on waxwings, fictional and real, in a work being published this spring by Cornell (entitled Style is Matter), which is how I found out about the above.


http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/bohemian_waxwing.htm

With best wishes,


Leland de la Durantaye
Assistant Professor
Department of English and American Literature and Language
Harvard University
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
phone: (617) 496 4904
fax: (617) 496 8737




On Dec 22, 2006, at 5:18 PM, Carolyn Kunin wrote:

To Don from Carolyn,

You sent this to the list on Tue, 30 Apr 1996 14:56:13 -0700
From:         Donald Barton Johnson
Subject:      _Pale Fire_ puzzles


1. Is "Oswin Bretwit" in *Pale Fire,* whose name Kinbote at one point
glosses as Zemblan for "Chess Intelligence," meant to unscramble as:
            "B [i.e., black] writes to win"?
I've puzzled over it before and this is the best I can come up with.

2. The waxwing--which by its range clearly must be the Cedar and not the
Bohemian (so much for central European motifs!) is also an allusion
to Icarus, right?

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