Male Northern Cardinal at Feeder

MY FRONT PORCH – NORTH MIAMI, FL

This photograph of a Male Northern Cardinal was taken at a bird feeder, made of a piece of driftwood, on my front porch. The camera used for this male northern cardinal photo was a Nikon D90 mounted to a Nikkor 60mm 2.8 lens.

The northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) are North American birds in the genus Cardinalis. It is also known commonly as redbirds or common cardinal. These birds can be found in southern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and south through Mexico.

It is found in woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps, or in my case… my porch.

The northern cardinal is a mid-sized song bird with a body length of 21 cm (8.3 in). It has a distinctive crest on the head and a mask on the face which is black in the male and gray in the female.

The male is a vibrant red, while the female is a dull red-brown shade. The northern cardinal is mainly granivorous, but also feeds on insects and fruit.

The male behaves territorially, marking out his territory with song. During courtship, the male birds feeds seed to the female beak-to-beak. A clutch of three to four eggs is laid, and two to four clutches are produced each year.