40 Fun Facts About Cardinals (Bird)

Why do male northern cardinals so often attack windows and car mirrors during the breeding season?

They are fighting a rival, or think so: a territorial cardinal takes his own reflection for an intruder and attacks it relentlessly.

How many US states have chosen the northern cardinal as their official state bird, a national record?

7 states have picked it, more than any other species, in a block running from Illinois and Ohio down to Virginia and North Carolina.

The northern cardinal is named after the red-robed senior clergy of which Christian church?

Roman Catholic cardinals wear distinctive red robes and caps, and the bird's genus name Cardinalis is simply the Latin word for them.

Rare northern cardinals that cannot turn the pigments in their food red grow feathers of which colour?

Yellow cardinals lack the enzyme that converts food pigments into red ones, so the beak changes colour too, though the dark face mask stays.

Which feathers do northern cardinals sometimes drop all at once while molting, to startling effect?

Head plumes can fall out together, leaving a bald cardinal with charcoal skin and visible ear openings until they quickly regrow.

Which northern cardinal mascot playfully 'beaks' the heads of St. Louis baseball fans at Busch Stadium?

Fredbird has entertained Cardinals crowds since 1979, and his name plays on Redbird, an old nickname for both the species and the team.

During courtship, what does a male northern cardinal do for his mate beak-to-beak?

He feeds her seeds, and the habit outlasts courtship: the male keeps bringing food to the female while she sits on the eggs.

Which rail company runs the Cardinal, a long-distance train named for the bird of states along its route?

Amtrak's Cardinal links New York with the Midwest by way of Charleston and Cincinnati, crossing a string of states that share the same state bird.

Which northern cardinals sing the loud whistled songs used to defend territories and court mates?

Both sexes sing clear whistled phrases, and a mated pair will sometimes sing together before nesting begins.

What colour is an adult female northern cardinal, in contrast to the brilliant red of the male?

Pale brown with a reddish tint on the wings, crest and tail, the female still shares the male's raised crest and coral-coloured beak.

Which seeds, favoured at feeders alongside safflower, are the classic way to attract a northern cardinal?

Sunflower seeds are the favourite, and feeders stocked with them may have helped the species spread northward over the past century.

What do northern cardinal parents mostly feed their nestlings, unlike the seed-heavy diet of the adults?

Insects make up almost all of a nestling's meals, and the adults crush each one in their beaks before handing it over.

What shape is the orange-red beak shared by male and female northern cardinals?

Cone-shaped beaks also do nest work: the female crushes twigs in hers until they are pliable enough to bend into a cup.

Where do female northern cardinals usually build their cup-shaped nests of twigs, bark strips and grasses?

In dense shrubs or vine tangles, the female hides a four-layered cup that takes up to nine days to build and is rarely used twice.

Which US state, far outside the northern cardinal's native range, has had the species since an introduction in 1929?

Hawaii gained its cardinals when birds were released there in 1929, and they now live on all of its major islands.

Which university's teams are called the Cardinal after a shade of red rather than the bird?

Stanford students chose cardinal red as their colour in 1891, and with no bird to dress up, its unofficial mascot is a tree.

The NFL's Cardinals, named for faded maroon jerseys rather than the bird, were founded in which city?

Chicago was home when owner Chris O'Brien bought used university jerseys in 1901 and declared their faded maroon to be cardinal red.

Which state began the tradition of official state birds by adopting the northern cardinal in 1926?

Kentucky led the way in 1926, and a campaign by the General Federation of Women's Clubs soon had other states naming birds of their own.

How do northern cardinals trap warm air against their bodies on freezing winter days?

By fluffing their feathers, cardinals hold a layer of warm air next to the skin, and in deep cold they also shiver to generate heat.

Which pigments, absorbed from food, give the male northern cardinal its brilliant red plumage?

Carotenoids are converted inside the bird's body, and males fed a narrower range of them turn only a washed-out red.

Which 1918 US law ended the once-thriving trade in northern cardinals as caged pets?

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it illegal to take, kill or possess a cardinal, a crime that can bring a fine and up to six months in prison.

Which naturalist gave the northern cardinal its first scientific description, in a landmark 1758 catalogue of species?

Carl Linnaeus named it Loxia cardinalis in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, and the bird changed genus several times before 1983.

Which birds often lay their eggs in northern cardinal nests, leaving the cardinals to raise the chicks?

Cowbirds build no nests of their own, and a cardinal pair's second nest of the season is often the one they target.

How does a northern cardinal usually move across the ground while foraging for fallen seeds?

By hopping across open ground and through low bushes, cardinals find most of their food, though they sometimes forage higher in trees.

While a female northern cardinal incubates her next clutch, who keeps feeding the previous brood of fledglings?

Their father takes over, which frees the female to start again and lets a pair raise up to four broods in a single year.

The northern cardinal was once a candidate to become which state's official bird, losing out to a blue chicken?

Delaware instead chose the Blue Hen Chicken in 1939, a gamecock strain linked to its Revolutionary War soldiers.

Which songbird, the pick of states from Kansas to Oregon, ranks second to the northern cardinal as a state bird?

Western meadowlark also represents Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, where its flute-like song carries across open grassland.

Which university's Cyclones are represented by a cardinal mascot because a storm was too hard to costume?

Iowa State took the bird from its cardinal and gold colours in 1954, and a naming contest then christened the mascot Cy.

What colour is a young northern cardinal's beak before it turns the orange-red of an adult's?

Gray-black at hatching, the beak only reaches its adult colour when the young bird grows its final plumage in the fall.

Which close relative of the northern cardinal, found in the arid Southwest, is nicknamed the desert cardinal?

Pyrrhuloxia shares its cousin's song and pointed crest but has a stubby, parrot-like bill, and the two may hybridise where their ranges overlap.

The vermilion cardinal, a close relative of the northern cardinal, is native to Colombia and which other country?

Venezuela and Colombia's dry cactus scrub is its home, where the almost entirely red male carries a tall crest that is usually held erect.

Despite its name, South America's red-crested cardinal belongs to which bird family rather than the true cardinals?

Tanagers claim it, yet in a neat swap North America's scarlet tanager was moved into the cardinal family in 2009.

Which of these blue songbirds belongs to Cardinalidae, the same family as the northern cardinal?

Indigo bunting is a small seed-eater in the cardinal family, a group that also takes in the grosbeaks and the prairie-dwelling dickcissel.

The northern cardinal was first classified in the genus Loxia, which today contains only which birds?

Crossbills are finches with mandibles that cross at the tips, a specialist tool for prising the seeds out of conifers.

In a Cherokee myth recorded by James Mooney, the Redbird, or cardinal, is the daughter of what?

The Sun lost her daughter in the tale, and when the men carrying the girl home from the ghost country lifted the lid of her box, she flew out as a redbird.

A 2016 study in Atlanta found northern cardinals unusually good at suppressing which mosquito-borne virus?

West Nile virus is suppressed inside an infected cardinal, an effect the researchers called supersuppression because it curbs the disease's spillover.

Northern cardinals sometimes take a sweet drink from holes drilled into maple trunks by which birds?

Sapsuckers drill the wells to feed on sap themselves, and cardinals add the stolen maple drink to a diet that is mostly seeds.

The northern cardinal was once known as the Virginia version of which famously tuneful European bird?

Nightingale was the comparison: the species was long called the Virginia nightingale, alongside folk names such as top-knot redbird.

What does the northern cardinal's alarm call, given when a predator nears the nest, sound like?

A metallic chip, short and sharp, warns the mate and nestlings, and both parents may fly straight at the intruder to scare it away.

Besides Mexico and Belize, which Central American country marks the southern edge of the northern cardinal's range?

Guatemala's north is as far south as the species naturally reaches, while a separate population lives on Mexico's Pacific slope.