This should finally put this to bed.
http://www.arizonahighways.com/custom.cfm?name=c_nature.cfm&secid=36&id=95
http://birdfotos.com/birdfoto/pyrrhuloxia/pyrrhuloxia.htm
http://gbbc.birdsource.org/gbbcApps...ciesCity&species=norcar&state=US-AZ&year=2006
THE REDDEST OF THEM ALL?
Many people coming to Arizona from the eastern United States are surprised to find that the Northern Cardinal, a common and much loved bird from their garden Òback home,Ó welcomes them to their new home in Tucson. Cardinals have a wide range in North America including the eastern and southern U. S., southern Canada east of the Great Lakes, the southwestern U. S. and much of Mexico. They have been introduced in the Los Angeles area in California.
The bird we call Northern Cardinal was considered a century ago to be as many as 4 different species but currently is classified as 18 subspecies. Though our Arizona Cardinalis cardinalis superbus is a very bright red, the scientific literature states that there is considerable color variation between males in this group, so "the brightest of them all" probably applies to individual males rather than the entire superbus subspecies.
As late winter drifts imperceptibly into spring, breeding activity in birds increases in intensity. One of the easiest backyard species in which to watch breeding behavior is the cardinal. The information presented here is from the Birds of North America account (Halkin and Linville 1999). Most studies of cardinals have been done in the eastern U. S. Are there differences in the Tucson area?
Cardinal nests are built in thick vegetation by the female who chews twigs in her bill to shape them before forming them into a cup around her body. The cup is wedged into position between branches, twigs or vines but not attached to them. Egg laying starts an average of 2-3 days after the nest is completed, and 1 egg is laid per day, usually an hour after sunrise, until a clutch averaging 2-3 eggs is complete. Males guard their mates especially attentively at this time, but DNA fingerprinting has determined that 9 - 36% of the chicks in a given nest are still fathered by a different male. Also, occasionally a different female lays an egg, fathered by the male of the pair, in the pair's nest. Successful reproduction, not fidelity, is what is important.
Incubation by the female starts after the last egg is laid, and she warms the eggs with the bare skin of her abdomen where feathers have been lost. After 11-13 days the eggs hatch and the pair begins frantically feeding the hungry nestlings. Their weight increases more than 7 fold in the first 8 days. Young birds usually leave the nest 9-10 days after hatching, barely able to fly short distances and with their feathers not yet fully grown. After leaving the nest the young birds are totally dependent on parents for about 3 weeks, hardly moving from their perch on a branch for the first 11 days. After this, association of parents and nestlings is variable; if the parents are ready to start another brood, parental care ends in less than 4 weeks, whereas at the end of the season it may last almost 2 months.
Because losses of eggs and nestlings are high, cardinals may start as many as 8 nests in a season. This is possible because cardinals are permanent residents, adapt to a variety of habitats including back-yards, and are omnivorous, eating seeds, fruit, and insects. Cardinals often dominate smaller birds and their close relative, Pyrrhuloxia, at feeders and other food sources.
Many cardinal pairs remain together all year either on their territory or in winter feeding flocks. Death or the occasional "divorce" makes space for a "floater," an unpaired bird. Second-year birds pair around the time the winter-feeding flock breaks up.
In urban Tucson you are more likely to have Northern Cardinals in your yard than Pyrrhuloxias, but toward the outskirts of town Pyrrhuloxias may be more common. The two species can have overlapping territories without evidence of aggressive behavior. Look for interesting interactions. Individual Cardinals and Pyrrhuloxias have been observed counter-singing to each other (S. R. Russell, personal communication). Barbara Kingsolver writes, "a pair of cardinals and a Pyrrhuloxia couple who nested in adjacent trees, became so confused, when the young fledged and flew to the ground, that they hopped around frantically for a week, feeding each other's kids." (Kingsolver 1995).
The "cheer, cheer, cheer" song of the Northern Cardinal is one of the most widely recognized bird vocalizations. Unlike most bird species, both male and female Cardinals sing. The songtypes are very similar and sometimes indistinguishable from Pyrrhuloxia. Enjoy listening in your backyard.
