This beautiful bird is a year-round resident in the East and Midwest and a frequent visitor for sunflower seeds at winter feeders. It is unmistakable with its bright red plumage and crest. The female is duller but with reddish tinge. The area behind the beak is black, while the beak itself is red. It derives its name from the apparel of the official in the Roman Catholic Church. The short, conical beak readily crushes seeds—the primary food of these birds. The voice consists of a song What cheer cheer cheer. . . purty purty purty. Tik tik tik describes its call.
Cardinals belong to the huge order of perching birds and the large finch family, and are related to Grosbeaks, not surprisingly, another bird with a stout beak—all mostly seed eaters. The scientific name of the Northern Cardinal is Cardinalis cardinalis, and the species was originally described by Linnaeus in 1758.
In the spring a pair of cardinals builds a deeply concave nest in a tangled location hidden in branches where they lay three or four light green eggs. The pair is rarely separated. Both sexes sing year-round and the males are particularly aggressive, erecting the crest as a threat toward other males. Males are said to be a little duller during nesting season, perhaps to be less conspicuous around the nest. The only other bird that closely resembles them is the elegantly named Pyrrhuloxia, which lives in the Southwest, and tends toward gray, not bright red. Bright red makes the cardinal a target for predators, including bird-eating hawks and small mammals, such as domestic cats. Squirrels may eat the eggs.
In John James Audubon’s beautiful collection of paintings, The Birds of America (with a foreword and descriptive captions by William Vogt, Macmillan Company, New York, 1942), which I inherited from my aunt, and I pored over in childhood, the compelling portrait is labeled as “Cardinal Grosbeak,” and male and female cardinals are painted in a wild olive tree. A lot has changed since Audubon’s day in the early nineteenth century. The birds probably fare much better farther north in the winter than they did then due to their close affiliation with humans. In addition to the book mentioned above, a major source for my article has been a work by an organization honoring his name, National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1998). Another source is published by the Society, The Sibley Guide to Birds (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 2000) by David Allen Sibley, featuring his original paintings, making him a sort of successor to Audubon.
The Northern Cardinal is the state bird of more states than any other—North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Also, many sports teams are named for these birds, such as the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and their minor league Memphis Redbirds. (“Redbird” is a common name for this bird.) The Illinois State University football and other teams are the Redbirds. As an alumnus to ISU, and growing up in Illinois, I have long identified with the “Redbird.” Now, living in Missouri, I keep a painting on my wall of a pair of them depicted in winter. Indeed, a pair of the living birds frequently winters about my house. They add cheer on gloomy days.
