Find Northern Cardinal gifts, plus facts and information about the Cardinal at AnimalsnMore Aviary.

The unmistakable male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is bright red. It has a crest, stout red bill and a black face. The light brown female is edged with red on the crest, wings and tail. This is North America's only crested bird with a conical beak except in the Southwest. There it is replaced by the Pyrrhuloxia. This bird is 8 to 9 inches long.

The Cardinal likes to eat grape, holly, blackberry, wild seeds and a variety of insects. Feeding mainly on the ground in the open and nesting in thickets, the Northern Cardinal is well suited to garden areas. Nonmigratory, it stays around bird feeders even in the snowy winters of southern Canada and the northeastern states, but it does best where winters are milder. They frequent woodland edges, thickets, brushy swamps and garden suburbs.The voice is a rich what-cheer, cheer, cheer; purty-purty-purty-purty or sweet-sweet-sweet-sweet.

The nest is made of twigs, rootlets, strips of bark and lined with grasses and rootlets. It is built in thick bushes or vines 2-10 feet high, but rarely up to 30 feet. Three or four pale greenish blue eggs (1.0 x .7 inch) spotted with reddish brown are laid in it.

You can find the Cardinal in the eastern United States and southern Canada south to the Gulf Coast, and from southern California, Arizona and southern Texas southward.

Class: Aves | Order: Passeriformes | Family: Cardinalidae
Genus: Cardinalis | Species: C. cardinalis

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