Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Cardinals share tasks of family life

Were you able to guess last week's mystery bird, the one nesting in the ficus on a local couple's patio? Sure you were. I don't know why it took me so long. The mother bird was hidden, and I did not ever see the father bird. This week the dedicated parents are hard at work taking food to three baby cardinals.
   The humans are all excited. Their son got the first look at number one chick when he watered the ficus, which had become rather dry. I think he had already been called upon to contribute his unsalted, hull-less sunflower seeds to feed the parent birds.
   The wife is a retired champion golfer with a tender heart. Her husband is an orderly person. He at first did not like the mess made by the sparrows who came onto the patio to share the food put out for the cardinals. He has mellowed though, and has enjoyed the voracious baby chicks.
   Year round species
   The northern cardinal is an altricial species which means that the young are born naked and helpless. Cardinals, resident here year round, do not migrate although young adults wander. They are popular because of their physical beauty and their lovely song. They are faithful mates and excellent parents.
   The adult male cardinal is almost entirely red, with a red crest which he raises and lowers at will. A black patch of feathers surrounds the base of his large, thick, red bill. His mate is gray brown, her bill and crest mildly reddish. The male often feeds the female during courtship or while she sits on the eggs.
   Both sexes sing, sometimes together. The rich, varied song of the male can be heard every month of the year. Sometimes he seems to be showing off, at others simply expressing his joy at being alive.
   She is the nest builder, but he helps. In a fork or branch of a tight shrub, from two to twelve feet above ground, she weaves a compact cup of twigs, grass, pieces of paper, weed stems, leaves, and strips of bark. A normal clutch contains three to four eggs, spotted, splotchy and multi-colored. The couple in the patio were spared a sad happening that often befalls cardinals here, predation by brown-headed cowbirds. Perhaps the nest's proximity to attentive human beings protected them from having the eggs of these intruders laid slyly in with their own.
   The three eggs hatched, one a day, as they were probably laid. Baby birds had probably been hearing the sounds of their parents through their shells for several days before beginning the task of breaking out.
   Faithful work
   Incubation requires 12 to 15 days. After that, it is constant labor for the adults trying to satisfy the clamor of the huge, open bills. Chicks leave the nest when they are 10 or 11 days old.
   Both sexes love bird baths, and come to feeders where their favorite dish is sunflower seeds. Their diet includes many kinds of beetles, leaf-hoppers, dragonflies, snails, slugs, crickets, and many varieties of weed and grass seeds. The young birds are fed mostly insects.
   With a long breeding season in this climate, a pair may have as many as four broods a summer. This depends on weather and food supply. When one clutch has graduated from the nest, father makes them his responsibility while the mother begins the next brood.
   The meeting of the Audubon Outdoor Club at the Fred B. Jones sanctuary out of Portland last week was enlivened with resounding songs of several male cardinals, some perched on branches in the brush and others boldly declaring themselves from wires above the road. "It is a good year for cardinals," they seemed to be saying.
  
  

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Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds in Texas since 1960.

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