The male Northern Cardinal is unmistakable. It is bright red with crest, a black face and stout red bill. The female is a light brown edged with red on the crest, wings and tail.
This is our only crested bird with a conical beak except in the Southwest, where it is replaced by the Pyrrhuloxia. Length: 8 to 9 inches (20-23 cm).
The Cardinal feeds on grape, holly, blackberry, wild seeds and many kinds of insects. Feeding mainly on the ground in the open and nesting in thickets, the Northern Cardinal is well suited to garden areas. Nonmigratory, it stays around bird feeders even in the snowy winters of southern Canada and the northeastern states, but it does best where winters are milder. They frequent woodland edges, thickets, brushy swamps and garden suburbs.The voice is a rich what-cheer, cheer, cheer; purty-purty-purty-purty or sweet-sweet-sweet-sweet.
Three or four pale greenish blue eggs (1.0 x .7 inch) spotted with reddish brown are laid in a nest made of twigs, rootlets, strips of bark and lined with grasses and rootlets in thick bushes or vines 2-10 feet high. Rarely up to 30 feet.
The Cardinal is a resident in the eastern United States and southern Canada south to the Gulf Coast, and from southern California, Arizona and southern Texas southward.
