The Stages of Cardinal Life

A couple of years ago, I observed and photo-documented the stages of a Northern Cardinal nest—from construction to the fledging of the young.  This process takes roughly a month, which doesn’t seem like very much time, but the fact of the matter is that young birds aren’t equipped to live on their own right after leaving the nest.  In the case of Northern Cardinals, fledglings continue to be fed by their parents for at least a month as they learn how to function as adults.  They’re not much different from human teenagers, when you think about it.

Although I didn’t find a cardinal nest this year, I have been able to watch “teenager” cardinals as they hang out with their parents.  If the sheer numbers of cardinals are any indication, there were probably at least a couple of successful nesting attempts in the woods near my home this season.  Some of the cardinal parents brought their young to the backyard feeding station, allowing me to see them up close and to study their plumage patterns and behavior.

Juvenile cardinals have dark bills, unlike their parents, which have red or orange-red bills.  The color change is generally complete by winter.  In the photo below, you can see a little bit of orange beginning to come through on the base and margins of the juvenile cardinal’s beak.  Female and male cardinals look very similar in the juvenile stage, but males can have a hint of red on their flanks.  It can be hard to tell, though, and the photo doesn’t provide a lot of strong clues in either direction. 

Juvenile cardinal

This next photo shows a different bird—an immature male.  This cardinal probably came from an earlier brood than the last bird, and its molt into adult plumage has progressed much farther.  Look at the red blotches on the head, back, and flanks. 

Immature male cardinal

The first of the two photos below shows the young male bird from another angle, where you can see all of the red feathers that are coming in on the breast.  The bill has also turned almost completely red.  This fellow has probably been fending for himself for a while now, but he won’t be ready to compete with scrappy, aggressive, adult males, like the one in the second photo, until next year.

Immature male cardinal -- not quite there yet

Adult male cardinal

Although both adult female and juvenile cardinals have reddish tails and flight feathers, adult female cardinals have red crests, as you can see in the first of the two photos below.  In about a year, female cardinals are ready to compete for territories and start nests.  Yes, they compete in much the same way that males do; research has shown that, on breeding territories, female cardinals chase away other females, and male cardinals chase other males.  Females also sing, if somewhat less frequently than males.  Juvenile cardinals might sing softer, unstructured versions of adult songs, as they are still learning.  They will consistently give whistled begging calls whenever they want food from their parents, though!  If you find some juvenile cardinals in the wild, watch for their wing-fluttering behavior and listen for those piping calls.

Adult female cardinal -- note the orange beak

Juvenile cardinals with gray beaks

As cardinals—both the adults and the juveniles/immatures—molt from one plumage to the next, sometimes they wind up looking a bit weird.  One of the most common “oddities” is when a cardinal loses most or all of the feathers on its head.  These cardinals can look as though they have a horrible disease, but, in most cases, they are perfectly normal and will have new feathers in due time.  The cardinal in the foreground of the next photo is an adult female with a bald, gray head. 

Earlier in the month, I routinely saw a female cardinal with a bunch of feathers sticking up on her back.  (This bird is actually the female cardinal in the fifth photograph of the post.)  Try as I might, I never could tell whether this was an injury or simply a scraggly patch from a recent molt.  The cardinal seemed to have no difficulty in foraging, flying, and generally moving around, so I didn’t worry about it, but it was certainly interesting to observe.

Ruffled feathers?

As you can probably tell, the wide variety of plumages that Northern Cardinals display during this season of the year makes it fairly easy—at least, for a brief window of time—to determine their age and to track some of them as individuals.  By next spring, some of this year’s juveniles will hold breeding territories of their own, and the cycle will continue.

Source:

Halkin, S. L. and S. U. Linville (2020). Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole and F. B. Gill, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.norcar.01