Somehow our garden is home to six cardinals this season, which I think may be due to the success of Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal raising a successful brood this year.
I may have missed some of the young visitors if it wasn't for the bird cameras set up around the garden. I started to notice young cardinals beginning to visit the feeder and birdbaths in late June, sometimes accompanied by dad (as seen in this video post I shared on Instagram). This continued into the fall as their feathers and beaks took on their adult hues.
I never did find a nest on my property, but I am assuming they called one of my neighbor's shrubs home. Cardinals nest in dense foliage, and tend to create the nest in a fork of small branches, anywhere from one to 15 feet high!
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| A cardinal molting into his adult feathers. |
By late fall, it appeared that there were three females and one male joining mom and dad. They would take turns not only visiting the feeder, but the winterberry, spicebush and viburnum, which were all covered in berries. Cardinals will also eat seeds (sunflower, black oil sunflower and safflower are favorites), along with a variety of insects.
Now it is the winter season, and the family routinely travels in groups to the feeders and whichever shrubs still have berries left to eat. I haven't managed to get a family portrait yet, but they brighten my day considerably when I see them throughout the garden. By spring, they will most likely break off and claim their territories, but I'm hoping we keep a larger population in our neighborhood.
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