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Northern Cardinal3


Image by Evangelio Gonzalez MD
Northern Cardinal
The Northern Cardinal or Redbird or Common Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a North American bird in the genus Cardinalis. It can be found in southern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and south through Mexico. It can also be found on the Big Island of Hawaii and on Oahu. It is found in woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps.
The Northern Cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of 21 centimeters. It has a distinctive crest on the head and a mask on the face which is black in the male and gray in the female. The male is a vibrant red, while the female is a dull red-brown shade. The Northern Cardinal is mainly granivorous, but also feeds on insects and fruit. The male behaves territorially, marking out his territory with song. During courtship, the male feeds seed to the female beak-to-beak. A clutch of three to four eggs is laid, and two to four clutches are produced each year. It was once prized as a pet, but its sale as cage birds is now banned in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
Taxonomy
The Northern Cardinal is one of three birds in the genus Cardinalis and is included in the family Cardinalidae, which is made up of passerine birds found in North and South America.
The Northern Cardinal was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae.[2] It was initially included in the genus Loxia, which now contains only crossbills. In 1838, it was placed in the genus Cardinalis and given the scientific name Cardinalis virginianus, which means "Virginia Cardinal". In 1918, the scientific name was changed to Richmondena cardinalis to honor Charles Wallace Richmond, an American ornithologist.[3] In 1983, the scientific name was changed again to Cardinalis cardinalis and the common name was changed to "Northern Cardinal", to avoid confusion with the seven other species also termed cardinals.[4]
The common name, as well as the scientific name, of the Northern Cardinal refers to the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, who wear distinctive red robes and caps.[5] The term "Northern" in the common name refers to its range, as it is the northernmost cardinal species.[5]
Description
The Northern Cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of 20–23 cm (7.9–9.1 in) and a wingspan of 25–31 cm (9.8–12 in). It weighs about 45 g (1.6 oz). [6] The male is a brilliant crimson red with a black face mask over the eyes, extending to the upper chest. The color is dullest on the back and wings.[7] The female is fawn, with mostly grayish-brown tones and a slight reddish tint on the wings, the crest, and the tail feathers.[8] The face mask of the female is gray to black and is less defined than that of the male. Both sexes possess prominent raised crests and bright coral-colored beaks. The beak is cone-shaped and strong.[7] Young birds, both male and female, show the coloring similar to the adult female until the fall, when they molt and grow adult feathers.[9] They are brown above and red-brown below, with brick-colored crest, forehead, wings, and tail.[4] The legs and feet are a dark pink-brown. The iris of the eye is brown.[4] The plumage color of the males is produced from carotenoid pigments in the diet.[10] Coloration is produced from both red pigments and yellow carotenoid pigments.[11] Northern Cardinal males possess the ability to metabolize carotenoid pigments to create plumage pigmentation of a different color than the ingested pigment. When fed only yellow pigments, males become a pale red color, rather than a yellow.[11]
Distribution and habitat
The Northern Cardinal is abundant across the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and in Canada in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. Its range extends west to the U.S.-Mexico border and south through Mexico to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, northern Guatemala, and northern Belize. It was introduced to Bermuda in 1700. It has also been introduced in Hawaii and southern California. Its natural habitat is woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps.[1] This bird is a permanent resident throughout its range, although it may relocate to avoid extreme weather or if food is scarce.[12]
Ecology
The Northern Cardinal is a Territory animal territorial song bird. The male sings in a loud, clear whistle from the top of a tree or another high location to defend his territory. He will chase off other males entering his territory. He may mistake his image on various reflective surfaces as an invading male, and will fight his reflection relentlessly. The Northern Cardinal learns its songs, and as a result the songs vary regionally. It is able to easily distinguish the sex of another singing Northern Cardinal by its song alone.[13] Mated pairs often travel together.[14]
Male often feeds the female as part of their courtship behavior
Both sexes sing clear, whistled song patterns, which are repeated several times, then varied. Some common phrases are described as purdy, purdy, purdy…whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit, what-cheer, what-cheer… wheet, wheet, wheet, wheet[12] and cheer, cheer, cheer, what, what, what, what[15] The Northern Cardinal has a distinctive alarm call, a short metallic ‘chip’ sound. This call often is given when predators approach the nest, in order to give warning to the female and nestlings.[4] In some cases it will also utter a series of chipping notes. The frequency and volume of these notes increases as the threat becomes greater.[4] This chipping noise is also used by a Cardinal pair to locate each other, especially during dusk hours when visibility wanes
Predators
Northern Cardinals are preyed upon by a wide variety of predators native to North America, including Cooper’s hawks, loggerhead shrikes, northern shrikes, eastern gray squirrels, long-eared owls and eastern screech owls. Predators of chicks and eggs include milk snakes, coluber constrictors, blue jays, fox squirrels, and eastern chipmunks.[6]
Diet
The diet of the Northern Cardinal consists mainly (up to 90 percent) of weed, grains, and fruits. It is a ground feeder and finds food while hopping on the ground through trees or shrubbery. It eats beetles, cicadas, grasshoppers, snails, wild fruit and berries, corn (maize) and oats, sunflower seeds, the blossoms and bark of elm trees, and drinks maple sap from holes made by sapsuckers, an example of commensalism.[16] During the summer months, it shows preference for seeds that are easily husked, but is less selective during winter, when food is scarce. Northern Cardinals also will consume insects and feed their young almost exclusively on insects.[17]

Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cardinal

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak


Image by Evangelio Gonzalez MD
The Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Pheucticus ludovicianus, is a large seed-eating songbird in the cardinal family (Cardinalidae). It breeds in cool-temperate North America, migrating to tropical America in winter.[1]

Adult birds are is 7-7.5 in (18–19 cm) long and weigh 1.6-1.7 oz (45-47 g) on average. At all ages and in both sexes, the beak is dusky horn-colored, and the feet and eyes are dark.[2]
The adult male in breeding plumage has a black head, wings, back and tail, and a bright rose-red patch on its breast; the wings have two white patches and rose-red linings. Its underside and rump are white. Males in nonbreeding plumage have largely white underparts, supercilium and cheeks. The upperside feathers have brown fringes, most wing feathers white ones, giving a scaly appearance. The bases of the primary remiges are also white.[1]
The adult female has dark grey-brown upperparts – darker on wings and tail –, a white supercilium, a buff stripe along the top of the head, and black-streaked white underparts, which except in the center of the belly have a buff tinge. The wing linings are yellowish, and on the upperwing there are two white patches like in the summer male. Immatures are similar, but with pink wing-linings and less prominent streaks and usually a pinkish-buff hue on the throat and breast. At one year of age – in their first breeding season – males are scaly above like fully adult males in winter plumage, and still retail the immature’s browner wings.[3]
The song is a subdued mellow warbling, resembling a more refined version of the American Robin’s (Turdus migratorius). Males start singing early, occasionally even when still in winter quarters. The call is a sharp pink or pick.[1]
Range and ecology
The Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s breeding habitat is open deciduous woods across most of Canada and the northeastern USA. In particular the northern birds migrate south through the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, to winter from central-southern Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean to Peru and Venezuela. The southern limit of its wintering range is not well known; it was for example only recorded in the Serranía de las Quinchas (Colombia) in the 1990s. In winter, they prefer more open woodland, or similar habitat with a loose growth of trees, such as forest edges, parks, gardens and plantations, ranging from sea level into the hills, e.g. up to 5,000 ft (1,500 m) ASL in Costa Rica.[4]
The first birds leave the breeding grounds as early as August, while the last ones do not return until mid-late May. In general, however, they migrate south in late September or in October, and return in late April or early May. It appears as if they remain on their breeding grounds longer today than they did in the early 20th century, when migrants were more commonly seen in May and August than in April or September. The Rose-breasted Grosbeak occurs as a very rare vagrant in western Europe.[5]
It builds a twig nest in a tree or large shrub. The Rose-breasted Grosbeak forages in shrubs or trees for insects, seeds and berries, also catching insects in flight and occasionally eating nectar. It usually keeps to the treetops, and only rarely can be seen on the ground. During breeding it is fairly territorial; in winter, it roams the lands in groups of about a handful of birds, and sometimes in larger flocks of a dozen or more. In the winter quarters, they can be attracted into parks, gardens, and possibly even to bird feeders by fruit like Trophis racemosa. Other notable winter food includes Jacaranda seeds and the fruits of the introduced Busy Lizzy (Impatiens walleriana).[6]
Fire prevention policies in the late 20th century have allowed forests to spread on the Great Plains in places where they would otherwise eventually burn down, thereby allowing the Rose-breasted Grosbeak to extend its range westwards. Increased hybridization with the Black-headed Grosbeak subspecies P. melanocephalus papago[7] has been recorded as a consequence. Indeed, range expansions seem also to have occurred elsewhere, for example in northern Ohio where it bred rarely if at all in the 1900s, but it by no means an uncommon breeder today. In general, though it requires mature woodland to breed and is occasionally caught as a cage bird, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak is not at all rare, and not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.[8]

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