More on the Red Bird

“In richness of plumage, elegance of motion, and strength of song, this species surpasses all its kindred in the United States. It is known by the names of Red-bird, Virginia Nightingale, Cardinal-bird, and that at the head of the present article.” So began John James Audubon’s description of what he called the Cardinal Grosbeak, and which we today know by the common name, Northern Cardinal. Early residents or wandering naturalist sometimes tried to associate it with particular states, naming it the Virginia Cardinal and Kentucky Cardinal. It has also been known as the crested redbird, perhaps to distinguish it from the uncrested, Summer Tanager, also red and also southern.

Scientifically, the Northern Cardinal is Cardinalis cardinalis. There are three species in the genus, Cardinalis. Pyrrhuloxia, a bird of the southwest, looks like a gray cardinal with an oversized beak. Vermilion Cardinal is found in northern South America, principally Columbia and Venezuela.

Our Northern Cardinal has been through various scientific classifications and has had a variety of common names as we already know. It achieved its current common name designating it as “northern” in 1983. “Northern Cardinal” was intended to avoid confusion with seven other species which are also called cardinals, even though only one of those species is in the same genus. The only other cardinal which might be seen in North America is the Red-crested Cardinal which escapes regularly in Florida and California.

Most people would be hard pressed to name any of those other cardinals, but to avoid confusion our cardinal is called “northern,” because it is abundant in the South of North America. Confused? What does bother me is the complete lack of imagination and poetry by the academics who decide on names, but that is another column.

“Cardinal” comes from the Latin, cardinalis, meaning “important.” The root meaning was originally “hinge,” and evolved to mean “important” in the sense of something on which an object or idea depended, or hinged. Eventually “Cardinalis” came to designate an important (cardinal) church in Rome and a member of the College of Cardinals which elects the Pope. These high church officials wore (and wear) red robes and red hats. When the European colonists to North America encountered a bird with a red hat (crest) and red robes they called it “Cardinal,” in spite of their generally Protestant and anti-Catholic tendencies.

Bent summarizes the behavior of the cardinal this way: “In the cardinal we have a rare combination of good qualities, brilliant plumage, a rich and pleasing voice, beneficial food habits, and devotion to its mate and family.”

There are many stories about how solicitous the male is toward his mate, how tirelessly he cares for his family, and how strong is the instinct to care for and feed the young. The male has been described as a model husband and father.

There is the story of a pair of cardinals which lost its nest. They rebuilt. While the female incubated, the male began feeding four young robins, being as attentive as the robin parents. When his brood finally hatched, he fed both his own young and the robins’ young.

And then there is the photograph in the National Geographic “Song and Garden Birds of North America” which shows a cardinal feeding goldfish: “Hungry goldfish crowd the edge of a backyard pool in North Carolina as a cardinal passes out tidbits of food. For days the bird followed this strange routine. Alighting on the pool fence, he chirped. As the seven goldfish gathered, he fluttered down and began to feed them. In their eagerness they almost leaped from the water. Food gone, the bird flew off for more. Perhaps this foster parent had lost his own brood.”

But, I suspect that DNA studies will show, if they haven’t already, that cardinals, male and female, are just as free with their favors as are most other species, and that neither are models of marital fidelity. Most broods of most songbird species are genetically diverse. The female has cheated on her mate, and unless there are a lot of free roaming bachelors around, the likelihood is that the male has cheated on his mate as well. I would be surprised if the cardinal were any different.

When we have a bird we really like, we tend to accentuate its “virtues” and over look less desirable traits. This is especially true with the cardinal. The male cardinal is fiercely territorial. He and will attack any potential rival, and, as I just suggested, probably for good reason. He is so paranoid about the presence of another male in his territory that he will attack that male relentlessly. Sometimes the male attacks his own reflection in a window. For several summers we had a resident male who, day in and day out, banged against a bedroom window in a futile attempt to drive away the rival male. Such jealous rage betrays obvious insecurity about the fidelity of his mate. He was so persistent that it is a wonder he didn’t break his own neck, or otherwise do himself damage.

Many people tell me they don’t like Blue Jays because they are bullies and chase away the smaller birds. But watch your resident cardinal. Like most writers, Bent is admiring of the cardinal and only reluctantly reports their truculent side: “Although amiable at times, the cardinal is generally mildly dominant at feeding stations and sometimes decidedly belligerent ....”

I watched my resident cardinal at the feeder this morning. “Belligerent” is a good adjective to describe his interaction with the smaller sparrows on the ground. On one occasion, he even turned a Blue Jay timid.

Looking through my photographs of the cardinal, I do not have any where the cardinal is sharing the bird feeder amiably with other birds. He has sent them away. I have one winter photo with the cardinal on the tray of the bird feeder. It is snowing heavily. The white pines in the background are almost white with accumulated snow. On top of the feeder, looking timidly over the eave are three pigeons. Pigeons are big birds, roughly twice the size and four times the weight of a cardinal. But Mr. Cardinal was in no mood to share his feeder. They had to wait their turn.

I love the cardinal. He is gorgeous (so is she). He is hardy; you have to admire a creature that doesn’t flee south just because of a little snow and cold. He is a survivor.

But what I love most about the cardinal is that he and she sing any time during the year, even on a snowy day in January. You have to love that!

Good birding!

The Red Bird

Bird calls are very difficult to distinguish. Most are some form of chip, which sounds like every other chip to anyone who does not have an auditory acuity, a great memory, and lots of experience.

However, there is one chip that I recognize almost all the time and wherever I am. It is a chip - or as some render it, tchip - that I hear from my feeders when the sky is just beginning to lighten in the morning. I hear the tchip in the evening as the last light is fading. I hear it on sultry summer evenings, on promising spring mornings, and wintry days when snow quickly deepens or frigid winds howl. I poured my first cup of coffee this morning, cupping the mug to warm my hands after my frosty walk out to the road for the morning paper. Through the thermal paned kitchen window I heard the familiar tchip and could just make out the crested figure hopping over the frosted grass.

First in the morning, last in the evening, frequent through the day when weather is foul or young fledglings need easy foraging, the Northern Cardinal is a bright splash of cheerful red during every season of the year. He is a welcomed presence at every backyard feeder. The cardinal would probably lead a poll which asked people to name their favorite bird. When people report cardinals at the feeders, they do so with underlying satisfaction. When the cardinals are absent there is a sense that a small, but important, pleasure in life is being withheld - as though one’s favorite glass of wine could no longer be sipped.

The male cardinal sports the bright red. The female is a rich golden brown with splashes of red and the characteristic cardinal crest, a beautiful bird in her own right. But it is the male that draws the attention. He stands out against the white snow, when singing on a budding spring branch, when dashing about in summer to feed his young. When you see a cardinal, you know, almost immediately, that it is a cardinal.

The only other bright red bird that we might expect to see in our New England states is the Scarlet Tanager; he is bright red with black wings. But the Scarlet Tanager is a tropical species that is only present during the late spring and summer, and stays pretty much in the mature forest. He is not a backyard feeder bird.

The presence of the Northern Cardinal in Vermont is a rather recent occurrence. John James Audubon reported the “cardinal grosbeak” as “very abundant in all our Southern States ....They are found in the maritime districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where they breed, and where a few remain the whole year; some are also seen in the State of New York, and now and then a straggler proceeds into Massachusetts.”

The Massachusetts ornithologist, Edward Forbush, knew the cardinal as a year-round resident in the vicinity of New York City, but he basically regarded it as an abundant southern species, and his account is rather limited.

The Life History of the cardinal by Alfred Cleveland Bent, published in 1968, begins: “As we travel southward from New England’s ice and snow to meet spring halfway, we are greeted by the loud peto, peto of the tufted titmouse, the lively, striking song of the Carolina wren, and the rich, whistling notes of the cardinal redbird, three birds we rarely see in New England. They seem to be welcoming us to the land of sunshine and flowers, and their music brings a heart-warming change from the bleak and silent woods we have left behind.”

Forty years later, these three southern species to which Bent referred are all present in most of our Vermont neighborhoods throughout the year. We no longer have to travel south during the ice and snow to enjoy the Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren (the least common of the three) or the Northern Cardinal. The cardinal is undoubtedly the favorite of the three.

The cardinal has been extending its range into the snowbelt. Toward the west, it can now be found in western Nebraska and Kansas, and sometimes into Montana and southern Alberta. It lives year-round in central Minnesota and Wisconsin, southern Ontario and on into Maine. In 2006 and 2007, the Christmas Bird Count north of Minnesota in Ontario recorded cardinals for the first time.

Audubon found “a great number” of cardinals “as far up on the Ohio as the city of Cincinnati.” For the last several years, the middle of Ohio (well north of Cincinnati) has been, in the words of Birder’s World, the “cardinal capital of the world.” One Christmas Bird Count last year counted a record 3,045 Northern Cardinals in the fifteen mile diameter count circle.

The authors of the Northern Cardinal monograph in Birds of North America cite three reasons for why the cardinal has extended its range and is thriving in northern winters. First, warming climate means less snow depth and easier foraging. It also means that less food is needed to stay warm.

Second, residential encroachment into forests and farmland with its hedgerows have created more cardinal friendly edge habitats. These habitats produce winter food and nest locations.

Finally, well-stocked bird feeders in winter: in the truly foul weather, when the snow pack is deep and the temperatures are low, backyard bird feeders provide easily attained food for generating the body energy needed to stay warm and survive. Many experts credit bird feeders for enabling cardinals to expand their range into the hostile winter climes.

The Northern Cardinal is most abundant in our southern states, but in accord with its common name, it is moving northward. Indeed, it has become an icon of the December holidays and the northern winters: the bright red cardinal on a white, snow covered branch - or resting among the needles of an evergreen tree - or on perched among pine boughs amid holly berries. Forbush put it this way: “when in winter a thick carpet of snow lies on the ground, its plumage seems to shine with unusual brilliancy in the reflected light from the snow and it stands out in marked contrast to the wintry background.”

The cardinal in winter is an assurance of good birding.

Fox Sparrow

I missed the Fox Sparrow in my yard during Spring migration. Reports have been coming from around the state of Fox Sparrows showing up, and I was beginning to worry that they might pass me by. Not so. The Fox Sparrow showed up this morning and has been coming and going all day. Such a big, handsome bird.

I had some trouble getting a decent photograph; I think I accidentally pushed some buttons which altered the automatic settings. I did two things. I corrected the settings. And then I took the radical step of washing the kitchen window - both outside and inside. (The kitchen window serves as cat TV, and the inside was full of nose marks from their intense interest in the programming.)

But there is no substitute for being outside. While waiting for the Fox Sparrow to reappear, I took the photos in the previous posting. The Fox Sparrow did not cooperate, but the Carolina Wren did, coming repeatedly to the sunflower and suet feeders. I hope it takes up residence in the neighborhood.

Birds in the Apple Tree

A focal point in our back yard is the apple tree. The apple tree came down in an ice storm just weeks before we bought our Vermont home almost twelve years ago. It re-sprouted from the roots and has gradually become a favorite stopping place for birds as they check for predators before going to the feeder. Last winter, with a three plus foot snow pack, food was scarce and deer came through the yard regularly - though always at night. They licked the seed from the platform feeder and then scraped the bark on the apple tree. We were sure it had been girdled and would die. Instead, it blossomed and produced an abundant crop of apples, although I think the apples are from the root stock. I suppose they are edible, but not to me. I also suppose they'll provide deer food in the winter, though there is lots of food available all over this year.

But all that is beside the point. The point is that the apples, and the remaining yellow leaves provide a wonderful frame for the perching birds. Late this afternoon, I sat on the backporch watching the birds & photographing them. Here are a few of the birds which paused in the apple tree.

Dark-eyed Junco

American Goldfinch

Common Grackle

Northern Cardinal

How to Keep Squirrels out of Bird Feeders

A woman approached me one Sunday after church. Agitated, she asked: “What can I do to keep the squirrels away from my bird feeder? They just clean me out.”

I responded, “You can’t do anything. They’re smarter than you are.”

She asked, “What about one of those squirrel proof feeders?”

I answered, “There is no such thing. The squirrels are smarter than the engineers.”

Anyone who has watched squirrels find their way to a bird feeder, knows that I was not being flippant. Squirrels are capable of overcoming the most ingenious obstacles devised by humankind. Their feats are legendary. They are not only leaping acrobats, tumbling gymnasts, and Spiderman scalers, but they seem to have a problem-solving and reasoning ability. There is no way to guarantee that all squirrels can be kept out of all feeders all the time.

I was given a bird feeder with a lever that automatically closes the seed access when weighted by a sitting squirrel. It works when the gray squirrel sits on the lever, but not when the squirrel hangs upside down from the roof. The squirrel rarely does that because it cannot get enough seed out of the narrow opening. It can get more seed faster from cleaning up the ground than from stealing from this feeder. Unfortunately, the birds do not care for the feeder either. Only one or two birds can visit this feeder at one time. Since I like lots of bird activity, this (semi) squirrel-proof feeder will never be my only feeder.

The large tubular feeder has two rows of perches. The perches and feeder openings are all metal. The feeder is atop a metal pole and is protected top and bottom by a squirrel baffle. Squirrels are able to defeat the baffles and cling to the perches, but so far they have not been able to gnaw through the metal or get their teeth started on the plastic tube. My supply of sunflower seeds has not been diminished by the squirrels. The birds love this feeder. It is not uncommon to have all sixteen perches on the two levels occupied in a maelstrom of feeding frenzy. Unfortunately, the feeder is only good for the smaller birds. Larger birds like the cardinal, grosbeaks, jays and doves are unable to get seeds from the small openings. I cannot exclude some of my favorite birds just because of the squirrels, so this feeder cannot be the only one.

I put suet in a wire metal basket. The woodpeckers and songbirds can feed through the wire mesh, but the squirrels can only gnaw at the suet when it has been packed tight after filling. As sharp as their teeth are, they have not yet evolved a wire-cutting edge. However, I have watched a red squirrel lift the top of the suet feeder and chew off the top portions of the suet. This was almost enough to make me into a gun owner, although my firing of a .22 would probably pose more danger to the birds, the neighbor’s dog and my indoor cats than it would to the red squirrel.

I once read that the solution to squirrels and bird feeders is to place the bird feeder at least twelve feet from anything that the squirrel can climb up and jump from. I have had some success with this plan. I placed a large feeder (it holds about 15 pounds of seed) on a 4x4 post. For a baffle, I used a three foot section of 6 inch stove pipe suspended by two nails. This worked quite well. One squirrel occasionally reached the feeder by running rapidly up the two foot section of the post not protected by the stove pipe and leaping to the feeder. But this squirrel was not always successful in the leap, and only attempted the leap when the ground seed was covered by snow.

However, the placement of a feeder in the open creates a problem for the birds. Songbirds like cover close by to which they can flee when a predator comes near. A feeder set in the open twelve feet from any trees or shrubs does not provide cover. So I planted a red-twig dogwood nearby, and for a few years it provided some of the needed cover. However, the wood shrub is now as high as the eaves and easily supports the weight of a squirrel. It was like providing the squirrel with stairway access to the food stores. The big gray rodent sat on the feeder, defiantly facing my kitchen window, and stuffed its cheeks full of my bird seed. Fifteen pounds of seed could disappear in a couple of days.

I finally had enough of that, and moved the post feeder with the stovepipe baffle to the middle of the yard, carefully measuring with my tape rule a spot at least twelve feet from the nearest thin branch of the apple tree. The post is close to low quince and scrub roses, so there is cover for ground feeding sparrows. The feeder is angled so that the back faces the large trees from which hawks might hunt, thus providing some protection to the feeder birds. So far it has worked. Squirrels have been around assessing the situation, but have not yet breached my defenses.

This means that when I fill this feeder with fifteen pounds of seed, it takes a long time for the birds to empty the feeder. I wish! Yesterday I watched three Blue Jays shoveling the seed onto the ground, picking one seed to eat, then shoveling more seed. This was not new; I’ve seen this happen before. I used to consider this a symbiosis whereby the small ground-feeding birds watched for hawks while the Blue Jays were scattering seed on the ground.

But now I’m not so sure. As the jays were shoveling seed to the ground, a squirrel was there stuffing the scattered seed into its cheeks. Paranoia kicked in. Could those jays be in league with the squirrels? Have the squirrels hired the jays to shovel seed for them? IS there a nefarious contract between the jays and the squirrels? How much are the squirrels paying the jays to shovel the seed? Can I subpoena bank records to find out? Is there a lawyer who can tell if I have probable cause? Please can someone tell me how I can keep the squirrels from eating my bird seed?

Birding Cape May

Birding on Monday continued in the afternoon in and around Cape May. Highlights were Marbled Godwit near Stone Harbor, and an guesstimated two or three hundred American Oystercatchers, but both species were distant through the scope. Sanderlings were chasing wave on the Stone Harbor beaches



Nothing unusual about this Ring-billed Gull, but I love the way the wind has ruffled its feathers.

The ponds and wetlands around the state park were full of ducks - Black Duck, Gadwall, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Mallard, and American Widgeon.

Have to take time once in a while to just enjoy the place.

Tuesday was a foul day, cold, windy, and rainy. I made a couple of brief excursions, including visiting the Cape May beach where a flock of Black Skimmers were roosting.