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Exploring the beautiful nature of California


California Nature:  Cardinals & Grosbeak


The Cardinals are a family of passerine birds that are robust, seed-eating birds, with strong bills. They are typically associated with open woodland. The sexes usually have distinct plumages. There are 43 species world wide, 13 North American species, and 10 Californian species.

The Northern Cardinal or Redbird or Common Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a North American bird in the genus Cardinalis. It can be found in southern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and south through Mexico. It can also be found on the Big Island of Hawaii and on Oahu. It is found in woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps.

The Black-headed Grosbeak prefers to live in deciduous and mixed wooded areas. It likes to be in areas where there are large trees as well as thick bushes, such as patches of broadleaved trees and shrubs within conifer forests, including streamside corridors, river bottoms, lakeshores, wetlands, and suburban areas. It also seems to avoid coniferous vegetation.
Black-headed grodbeaks are found in most parts of California nature The Black-headed Grosbeak is a small migratory bird which lives in a wide range, spanning from southwestern British Columbia to the western half of the United States, to central Mexico and rarely Central America. During the winter months, this species typically flies to Mexico to dine on the poisonous Monarch butterfly and berries. This species has an affinity for deciduous and mixed woodlands, favoring areas with large trees and numerous shrubs. They also tend to avoid coniferous woodlands. Their normal diet consists of pine tree and other seeds, berries, spiders, insects and fruit.

Black-headed Grosbeak are a large, stocky finch with black-streaked, orange-brown back, and black head, wings, and tail. Their breast is orange-brown and belly is yellow. Wings have conspicuous white patches, these birds have black legs and feet. Foraging on the ground and in trees and bushes, the black-headed grosbeak eats insects, caterpillars, seeds, fruits and berries.

Black-headed grosbeak nests are so thinly constructed that eggs can be seen through the bottom. However, nests are less thin in northern California. Thin nests may provide ventilation and help keep them cool.
The male Northern Cardinal is perhaps responsible for getting more people to open up a field guide than any other bird. They’re a perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness, and style: a shade of red you can’t take your eyes off. Even the brown females sport a sharp crest and warm red accents. Cardinals don’t migrate and they don’t molt into a dull plumage, so they’re still breathtaking in winter’s snowy backyards. In summer, their sweet whistles are one of the first sounds of the morning.

Only a few female North American songbirds sing, but the female Northern Cardinal does, and often while sitting on the nest. This may give the male information about when to bring food to the nest. A mated pair shares song phrases, but the female may sing a longer and slightly more complex song than the male.
 
A perennial favorite among people, the Northern Cardinal is the state bird of seven states.
The northern cardinal is a beautiful singing bird welcome in California backyards Many people are perplexed each spring by the sight of a cardinal attacking its reflection in a window, car mirror, or shiny bumper. Both males and females do this, and most often in spring and early summer when they are obsessed with defending their territory against any intruders. Birds may spend hours fighting these intruders without giving up. A few weeks later, as levels of aggressive hormones subside, these attacks should end.

Look for Northern Cardinals in dense shrubby areas such as forest edges, overgrown fields, hedgerows, backyards, marshy thickets, mesquite, re-growing forest, and ornamental landscaping. Cardinals nest in dense foliage and look for conspicuous, fairly high perches for singing. Growth of towns and suburbs across eastern North America has helped the cardinal expand its range northward.

Northern Cardinals eat mainly seeds and fruit, supplementing these with insects (and feeding nestlings mostly insects). Common fruits and seeds include dogwood, wild grape, buckwheat, grasses, sedges, mulberry, hackberry, blackberry, sumac, tulip-tree, and corn. Cardinals eat many kinds of birdseed, particularly black oil sunflower seed. They also eat beetles, crickets, katydids, leafhoppers, cicadas, flies, centipedes, spiders, butterflies, and moths.
The cardinal is about eight inches in length. It has a black mask on its face, a crest on its head and a short cone-shaped bill. The mask on the female is usually lighter than the mask on the male. Cardinals are known for their bright red color but only the male is red. The females is a dull brown or olive color with dull red on her wings and tail.
 
Cardinals usually raise two broods of young a year. They mate in March and again from May to July. The female usually lays four eggs. The eggs take about 12 days to hatch. Cardinals usually build cup-shaped nests in small trees, bushes, shrubs and thick vines that are no more than three to eight feet off the ground. Their nests are made of twigs and bark and are lined with grass, moss and other soft materials. Young cardinals leave the nest after 11 days and they can fly within 20 days.
Blackbirds    California Condor    Cardinals    Cranes    Crows, Jays, & Magpies   Eagles    Finches    Flycatchers    Hawks Hummingbirds    Owls    Game Birds    Raptors    Shore Birds    Sparrows    Tanager    Thrushes    Vultures    Wading Birds Warblers      Woodpeckers      Wrens
 
 
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