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| Female Northern Cardinal in Arkansas, November 5, 2013. |
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| Male -- also November 5, 2013, in Arkansas. |
If you live in eastern or central North America and spend
any time outside, chances are good that you’re familiar with the Northern
Cardinal. Cardinals are so common, in
fact, that I confess I tend not to pay them much attention—especially if there
are more unusual birds nearby. But a
couple of summers ago, a pair of these birds nested in the thorny elaeagnus
shrub near the house, right outside the living room window. Naturally, I had to pay attention to that!
The cardinals began nesting in the thorny elaeagnus shrub
right around the time that the White-eyed Vireos that I wrote about previously
were nearly fledged. I first noticed the
female cardinal carrying twigs in her bill to the nest site, which was a few
feet higher in the shrub than the vireos’ nest had been. This was typical behavior. Female cardinals construct the nests and
incubate the eggs, while males bring food to the females during incubation and
assist in feeding the young after they hatch.
As you can see, cardinals build their nests on top of limbs,
unlike vireos, which suspend theirs from forks in the branches. Whenever the female cardinal added new
material to the nest, she bent it with her bill and pushed it into a cup shape
with her feet. The outside layers were
constructed from twigs, bark, and leaves, while finer materials, such as
grasses and pine needles, formed the lining.
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| June 19, 2016 -- Cardinal building the nest! |
Checking early-stage nests too frequently can lead to the
parent birds abandoning the site, so I was cautious about getting photos at
that point. By June 28, there were two
eggs in the nest, but, since I had been avoiding the nest, I assumed that they
had probably been there for two or three days.
Cardinals lay anywhere from one to five eggs, with two to three being more
typical.
According to Birds of North America Online, incubation takes 11-13 days.
The eggs were definitely hatched on or before July 7, when I photographed the slightly
downy nestlings for the first time.
By July 11, the young birds were much larger and more
heavily feathered. You can see how their
bills are starting to turn dark, a characteristic of juvenile cardinals. Their beak color doesn’t change to red or
red-orange until late in the fall.
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| July 11, 2016 |
On July 14, the nestlings were nearly ready to fledge. Although it’s difficult to determine exactly
how heavily feathered the average dinosaur might have been, this is what I tend
to imagine juvenile dinos looking like. (On
the anatomical level, though, modern birds and the dinosaurs from which they
evolved differ very little—so I’d guess that quite a lot of dinosaurs may have
had full plumage.)
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| July 14, 2016 |
I think that these cardinals fledged on July 15 or 16. Fledging usually occurs after about nine or
ten days, so this estimate seems reasonable.
You can just barely make out one of the nestlings in the center of the
photo below. That photo was from July
15, and the one of the empty nest was taken the next day. This might have been the second brood of the
year from these nonmigratory birds, but I can’t say for certain.
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| July 15, 2016 -- at least one young cardinal still on the nest |
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| July 16, 2016 |
This cardinal nest and the young in it were from two summers
ago. There haven’t been any birds
nesting in the thorny elaeagnus (or thorny olive) this year, though, since it’s
only a bit above waist height at the moment.
A recent windstorm damaged the shrub, causing it to lean heavily to one
side, so we pruned it. It’s a more
manageable height now, with no long shoots threatening to grow over the roof
(see photo below). In its native range
in Asia, this species often “climbs” by entwining its upper branches with the
limbs of the trees above it. Although I
miss being able to see birds nesting so close to the house, I don’t bemoan the
fate of the thorny olive. I intend to
elaborate a little on invasive plants—including this species—in a future post.
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| June 22, 2016 |
