JF To Jansy: Yes, swallows perch, often lined up on wires
JF to MR:....connecting "waxwing" to Icarus... Icarus falls, while Daedalus escapes.. we could associate the "ashen fluff" with Icarus...the body dying and the spirit living, I'm confused between "I am an indivisible monist" and the overtly dualistic descriptions of Cincinnatus in /Invitation to a Beheading.

 

Jansy to JF: Thanks for informing me that swallows perch: I was wondering about the kind that skim the waves to catch fish ( must be the kind of "swallow tailed" sea-gull) as mentioned in the paragraph about "feathering". Another swallow appears at least twice in KQK: "a diminutive black hat with a little diamond swallow", worn by Martha (page 742). Are the two kinds named "lastochkas" in Russian?

 

In "Birds of North America", Noel Grove wrote that the Baltimore oriole got its name from its colors that match those of the Lords Baltimore, colonizers of Maryland. The rented car in KQK, used while the Icarus was being repaired, was an oriole.If VN had in mind the Baltimore Oriole ( the letters that form Oriole are part of those in Baltimore) then Dreyer's black Icarus was replaced by an "American blue" car. Why would VN observe that it was not a success?

I found no reference to the Bohemian waxwing among the North American birds, but I learned that the Cedar waxwings range over the lower provinces and forty-eight states of the US.  Another note tells us that they wear "robber's masks" and some lose the "glossy red wing flecks that adorn some, explaining their names". 

If they got their names from the red flecks on the wings ( Cedar wood is dark-pink in the center with lighter tones of pink on the outer rings in one of the descriptions I found), the  waxwing mainly envisaged in PF ( JF, nb:"mainly envisaged") might have been the cedarn - if we accept that there is a connection bt waxwings and the Red Admiral butterfly ( that sometimes also loses its red band) and if the Bohemian waxwings never carry red spots on the wings.

The pictures that appear in Noel Grove's book show cedar waxwings with very little "grey": their bodies and part of the wings are mainly mustard-colored, at least during Summer and Spring. I wonder if their feathers change into grey during Winter!

 

Quite an interesting point on monism and dualism for the "body and spirit" issue in VN. But in Pale Fire, isn't there a suggestion that it was Kinbote in Zembla's crystal land who "lived on"? 

If we read the succession of reflections we might come up with:

This is confirmed by the other lines (132/133): "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain /  By feigned remoteness in the windowpane"  when we understand "feigned remoteness" to indicate  a "far far away land" ( i.e: Zembla ).