As a follow-up to last month’s photo essay about backyard birds, I thought I would focus this essay on one of my favorites, the cardinals. While getting stronger from my recent knee surgery, I am spending more time practicing my photography skills in the backyard and the cardinals were frequent and colorful visitors. I am not a “birder”, but rather a wildlife photographer that really likes bird photography. I am just now getting more proficient at recognizing different species of songbirds by sight and song and writing these essays gives me a chance to do a little more research about my subjects.
Cardinals do not migrate and so we see them throughout the year. For the most part they are monogamous and both males and females care for the young, although males generally have more food gathering responsibility. Both males and females sing and I learned that females may sing while on the nest to tell the males what type of food to bring home. Male cardinals are not born with the red coloring which is acquired later from the berries and food they eat as they mature. Also, cardinals are very territorial and can be very aggressive with any threat to their territory. An amusing example of this occurred a few years ago when I was arriving at a local park to do some photography. While exiting my car, I was startled by a male cardinal who landed on my outside rearview mirror and started pecking at his reflection. Unable to realize he was looking at himself he was giving the “intruder” a serious scolding.
Several of the images in this essay show cardinals in flight. Flying songbirds are very difficult to photograph because they are so fast and their movements are not easy to predict. Here I tried to capture the beauty and grace of one of my very favorite backyard birds. I hope you enjoy the photos.
