Northern Cardinal - The Red Bird
Weekly Wildthings #1
Ready one day early … a bonus.
You never know what wildlife is living in your back yard until you look - but some people need help to go beyond the bucket categories of “birds and bugs” and know what they are looking at. I will be sharing some more or less weekly portraits of interesting species from the parks and gardens of suburbia - occasionally elsewhere too - to try to remedy that. If you find it interesting and want to know more, then please check out my “1001 Species” book on this link (sold at cost - I don’t take a profit).
https://1001species.substack.com/p/1001-species-the-book
I will be writing about our urban and peri-urban wildlife neighbours, plant and animal. Sometimes really common and sometimes interestingly rare. To get the ball rolling, we start with a bird that everyone knows really well.
My first Canadian lifer was the Red Bird, the “Devil’s Bird”, the Northern Cardinal. Starting with a short tale of our first encounter, made as the kettle boiled for morning tea a quarter century ago.
The very first bird that I can remember really “seeing” was a European Dipper over 60 years ago. I can remember it quite clearly as being interestingly different to all the other little, unnamed brown jobs of my childhood environment. My first lifer in fact, my “spark bird”. The years moved along and there I was, a bit over forty years later (1998) standing on another continent in the kitchen of our new house in Montreal brewing the obligatory cup of tea, without which no day can be said to have really started. I was looking out of the window waiting for the kettle to boil, when …
It was our first morning in the new house. The people we had bought it from were not gardeners, so basically I was looking out at a largish square of not very interesting lawn with trees around the edge. Right in front of the kitchen window was a very decrepit, aged wooden bird feeder on which the night before one of us had put some dry bread crusts. Something random anyway. Kettle burping away to one side. Tea leaves – no bags for us – in the pot, mugs laid out ready and then there in front of me appeared this glorious blaze of bright red bird life.
“What is that?” My brain screamed. This is Montreal, not the tropics. Nothing has the right to be that bright on a dull morning.
Of course, what it was was a male Northern Cardinal. Not at all a rare bird as we soon came to know, but WOW!! I was teetering on the edge of the deep rabbit hole that contains Canadian birding … and lots of birders who became our best friends as a consequence.
Cardinals may, because of the colour, well be the most recognized birds of all. Certainly better known than the several species of Sparrows (“What, you mean there is more than one sparrow species?”). Certainly it caught my eye coming from a corner of the world where, it can’t be denied, an awful lot of birds come in varying shades of brown. Not that there is anything wrong with that, occasionally there is a little yellow or a white flash but rarely anything really bright. I am going to be shot down in flames for that statement but bear with me. It was immediately evident that this continent has creatures that are different to those I grew up with - surprise. Of course, as a biologist I was well aware of that in the abstract but coming face to face with this striking evidence of not-the-sameness was an eye-opener. I hate to think how many tons weight and $$$-worth cost of black sunflower seeds this tribe has swallowed in the quarter century since that first Cardinal said good morning and asked for breakfast.
Since that first Cardinal sighting there have been few days when we have not been visited in the garden by one or more of the birds, or on which we have not been sung to by them as we walk around. In the spring the males become very territorial and have a distinctive call that screams “spring is coming – this is my tree”. One of their sounds has been likened to a Star Wars light sabre 😉 Given how common they are it’s hard to realize that only two or three generations ago they were rare to non-existent here. The species gradually pushed its territory northwards over the past half century and is now very well established. They are not migratory and manage to survive our very cold winters seemingly without much difficulty. The move northwards coincided with environmental conditions slowly changing, facilitated by large numbers of people setting up garden bird feeders, and planting more and more native plants in their gardens. Especially shrubs. Cardinals love shrubs, spending part of each day sheltering inside bare branches then, come spring, building their cup nests deep within the shrubbery. Warmer nights brought on by climate change have also been a helping factor.
It’s funny that for such a visually distinctive species. Even people who claim to not like birds (yes, they do exist) must be conscious of them, yet many have not understood what they are looking at. I recall one day, when at work a colleague came into my office and asked about a strange bird she had seen. Did I know what it was? Her description was quite detailed and I suggested it was perhaps a female Cardinal – could that be it? Absolutely not, she was adamant. “I know Cardinals – I see them every day”. She was actually slightly offended that I might suggest such a thing … so I gently asked if she could get a photograph. A few days later she appeared with one. “There you are – not a Cardinal but I can’t find it in my bird book”. Dear reader, it was indeed a female Cardinal – it’s just that females are not cardinal red. She didn’t believe me until I had shown her the difference in a field guide. People make these mistakes too often. It’s in the same league as the everybody knows “fact” that American Goldfinch (Canaries to some) migrate south in winter when in actuality they are common, year round residents that just happen to shed their bright yellow plumage once all that breeding stuff is behind them.
Individual birds vary in the degree of their red-ness. Cornell Lab of Ornithology has analyzed feathers from many cardinals and found that the birds’ brightness is a good indicator of its overall health and fitness. However, it was noted that city cardinals may eat a lot of berries from garden honeysuckle plants, an alien species. These birds were especially brightly coloured but generally were not in as good condition as the birds not feeding on honeysuckle, because honeysuckle berries are lower in fat and protein than many native berry-bearing shrubs. So the redness of urban cardinals isn’t necessarily a good a health indicator for female cardinals. It just means they live amongst honeysuckle. Either way, the big, butch bright red urban males strut their stuff and all the ladies are programmed to go into a swoon over him. As J says “… so, rather like the excess hamburger effect in humans then?”
The red comes from their diet as many of the berries they like contain carotenoids, phytonutrients like beta-carotene and lutein. Cardinals have an enzyme that converts yellow carotenoids to red before depositing them in the feathers. A few individual cardinals have an enzyme defect such that they cannot convert the carotenoids, and end up yellow instead of red - albeit this is not common.
The message for gardeners who want healthy Cardinals to visit. Get rid of those honeysuckles and replace them by pretty well any other kind of native berry-bush as Cardinals simply like berries, regardless of source. Consider, various species of dogwood, viburnum, elderberry, winterberry, wild grape, blackberry, mulberry, serviceberry and hackberry trees as well as staghorn sumac. Plus, of course, keep those feeders topped up with sunflower seeds.
One last observation – there are people of a mawkish character who say that, and I paraphrase, if you see a Cardinal then you know an angel is near. Piffle, say I. Piffle and tosh. Surely everyone knows that angels wear white while the Devil’s birds will always be clad in red. Cardinals are far too stylish to be anything but Devilish.
Some Cardinal Facts (edited from Cornell)
Northern Cardinals hop through low branches and forage on or near the ground and commonly sing and preen from a high branch of a shrub. The distinctive crest can be raised and pointed when agitated or lowered and barely visible while resting. Cardinals often travel in pairs during the breeding season, while in fall and winter they can form small flocks and may forage with other species, such as Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows, Tufted Titmice, Goldfinches, and so on. They fly rather reluctantly on their short, round wings, taking short trips between thickets while foraging. Pairs may stay together throughout winter, but up to 20 percent of pairs split up by the next season. Northern Cardinals eat mainly seeds and fruit, supplementing these with insects, especially when feeding nestlings..
A week or two before the female starts nest building, she starts to visit possible nest sites with the male following along. The pair call back and forth and hold nesting material in their bills as they assess each site. Nests will be wedged into a fork of small branches in a sapling, shrub, or vine tangle, 1-15 feet high and hidden in dense foliage.
The next “Weekly Wildthings” will probably be in two or three weeks as I will be travelling in search of new creatures well beyond the internet. Regular service thereafter.