Cardinals

Hi!
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a bright red male cardinal at our bird feeder. I decided to learn more about them:

Cardinals:

Food:
Adults eat weed seeds, spiders, farm crops, and wild fruits and berries. They also eat insects such as caterpillars, beetles, and grasshoppers. In the winter, they eat mostly seeds, buds and berries. At bird feeders, cardinals like to eat mealworms, nuts, fruit, peanut butter, cracked corn, black oil sunflower seeds, sap, millet, and other grains.

Habitat:
Cardinals live throughout the United States, and even in some parts of Canada. They like warm climates, such as southeast U.S.A.

Mating and nesting:
A male cardinal will give a female cardinal a seed, or anything else he can find. The male flies over to the female. The two touch beaks as the female accepts the seed. At a bird feeder, this process is called mate feeding.

Cardinals stay with each other until one of the two dies. Then the other mate sets off to find another mate. This habit is described as ''mating for life''.

After the couple mates, the two begin to make a nest. The male perches on a branch, and searches for any signs of other males and predators, while the female collects paper, leaves, and dry leaves, twigs, vines, grass, hair, bark strips, and rootlets, for the nest.

Cardinals nest in bushes and branches 1 to 15 feet off the ground. They like to nest in pine trees to protect the eggs and young from predators, and weather.

The females nest from March to August, and lay 2 to 5 eggs at a time. The eggs can be buff or gray colored, or even greenish, with gray or brown speckles. Eggs hatch after 12 to 13 days. Young leave the nest at 9 to 11 days old.

Description:
Males are a bright red, with a red crest on its head. Females are tan with some gray, and they too have a pointed crest.

Height: 8 to 9 inches.

Weight: 1.5 to 1.8 ounces

Facts:
Cardinals are the state bird of seven states:
Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Their tweets sound like ''chew, chew'', ''wheet, wheet'', and ''cheedle, cheedle''. Their most famous song is ''cheer, cheer''.

Another name for cardinals is ''redbirds''.

Cardinals can live to be 15 years old.

*Footnotes*:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/cardinal/

http://www.wild-bird-watching.com/Cardinal.html

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/wacardinal.asp

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_cardinals_nest

Hope you liked the information, and the sites.

Until next time,
Chiara