Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re talking about northern cardinals. You’ll make us sing if you subscribe. Thank you to G. T. for today’s request. We call these laser birds. If you’ve never heard one in real life, this may be difficult to appreciate, but here's an example of their laser-like call. There are other cardinal species, but we wanted to focus specifically on Northern cardinals because we’re so familiar with them and we didn’t realize they aren’t found all throughout the United States. Northern cardinals are found from southern Canada to down into parts of Mexico and Central America. Westward, they’ve reached as far as southern California by expanding their range, which we’ll be discussing later, but they’re mostly absent from the north western corner of the United States. Plus, they aren’t even found in other parts of the world, which is sad, because they’re fun birds to watch. Of course, we don’t have kookaburras, so maybe it evens out.

Though they’re protected under the migratory bird act, northern cardinals don’t migrate. This makes them a common and typically welcome sight in winter. This can be especially true of the bright red males who can add a bit of color to what some consider an otherwise dreary landscape. Personally, we both have a fondness for the less ostentatious ladies, but to each their own. Female and juvenile northern cardinals have soft red tones with muted brown feathers while males are almost impossible to miss in their red plumage. Even when they’re foraging among shrubs, male cardinals stand in stark contrast to green leaves. Northern cardinals live in forests, along forest edges, in overgrown fields, and in backyards. Northern cardinal especially love singing from high areas. They also love to eat seeds like the goldfinches we talked about a few weeks ago. Along with seeds, northern cardinals eat fruit and arthropods such as katydids, centipedes, spiders, flies, and moths. Something noteworthy about the diets of northern cardinals is that the adults consume mostly plant material but the babies are fed mostly insects and other animals.

Northern cardinals build their nests in dense thickets. The female does most of the construction but the male helps her to locate materials with which to build it. It takes about a week to build the nest. The female will then lay one to five eggs and incubate them for just under two weeks. Once they’ve hatched, it takes just over a week for the baby northern cardinals to leave the nest, but they’ll stick around getting food from their parents until they’re about two months old. Northern cardinals normally travel in small groups that are formed as the juveniles are kicked out of their parent’s territory, so it’s typically not too difficult to find a cutie to cuddly up with. They may produce two broods per year, though the second brood may be replaced by the eggs of brown-headed cowbirds who mooch off other birds to raise their kids! Sometimes northern cardinal pairs stay together over the course of a few breeding seasons, other times they’ll find a new mate. To attract a mate, the male puts on displays, makes calls, and offers food.

Northern cardinals weigh just one and a half ounces (42 grams) and have up to a foot (30.5 centimeters) wingspans. They make tasty meals for hawks, owls, snakes, squirrels, and domestic and feral dogs and cats, but if they can avoid these animals they may live to be more than a decade old. Northern cardinals have done well for themselves in terms of expanding their population thanks to humans. These birds take full advantage of feeders and do well living in the backyards of homeowners. At this point they’ve expanded across the United States into some sections of California. They’ve also been named the state bird of seven of the United States, giving them that title more times than any other bird species

For more facts on northern cardinals, check out the links in the description. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.