Cardinal

The Northern Cardinal is one of the more well known birds in the area and give people a warm, red, feeling during the winter. == =__**Physical Appearance**__= Male cardinals have the signature red, with a reddish bill and black face around the bill. Females are a duller brown with reddish tinges in the wings, tail, and crest. They have the same black face and red-orange bill. Cardinals are fairly large, long-tailed songbirds with short, thick bills and a very noticable crest. Cardinals often sit with a hunched-over posture and with the tail pointed straight down. =__**Behavior**__= Cardinals like to sit in low branches and shrubs in pairs. They are common at bird feeders and make a high chirping sound. Females build the nests. She crushes twigs with her beak until they’re pliable, bends the twigs around her body and pushes them into a cup shape with her feet. The cup has four layers: coarse twigs (and sometimes bits of trash) covered in a leafy mat, then lined with grapevine bark and finally grasses, stems, rootlets, and pine needles. The nest typically takes 3 to 9 days to build; the finished product is 2-3 inches tall, 4 inches across, with an inner diameter of about 3 inches. =__**Diet**__= Cardinals eat seeds, fruit, and insects. Common fruits and seeds include dogwood, wild grape, buckwheat, grasses, sedges, mulberry, hackberry, blackberry, sumac, tulip-tree, and corn. Cardinals also eat birdseed, particularly black oil sunflower seed. They also eat insects like beetles, crickets, leafhoppers, cicadas, flies, centipedes, spiders, and moths. =__Sources__=
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