More often our research money goes toward “applied nature,” the practical stuff, which often means waiting until a creature declines or disappears before trying to figure out why.īut the Northern cardinal is doing just fine, says Ryan Brady, an ornithologist with the Department of Natural Resources. In this budget-pinching era, we don’t much spend time or money to better understand natural history. And don’t hold your breath waiting for researchers to study the question. Not that you need my help, but “crepuscular” means being most active at dawn and dusk.īut why do cardinals feed so regularly at daylight’s edges? No one knows for sure, judging by the lack of explanations found in ornithology references. Their eating patterns also remind me of cottontails and whitetails, two other creatures with crepuscular natures. We admire in others what we value in ourselves, right? True, cardinals also visit our feeders during daylight with all their feathered others, but I respect them most for their first-to-rise, last-to-bed work ethic. They’ll eat late into twilight, turning again to silhouettes on snow before winging to overnight roosts. Roughly 10 hours later the process reverses, with cardinals the last to feed at dusk. That’s the routine at our feeders each morning as I make coffee. I wondered if our pair of pileateds would show up next, but we don’t count on them. Eventually, a few chickadees also showed up, as did downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers. The cardinals had the place to themselves for several minutes before the juncos arrived, and a few minutes longer yet before the goldfinches flitted in to tug nyjer seed from tube feeders. It could be submissive birds giving way to others of the same or opposite sex. I just assumed females were ceding turf to arriving males each time one fluttered from the feeder’s platform to its footing below. Though I studied them from less than 5 yards through our kitchen window, dawn was still too distant to distinguish red-feathered males from the saddle-brown females with scarlet trim. Like regulars dropping in at dawn for eggs, news and coffee at a local diner, six cardinals crunched sunflower seeds from both sides of my bird feeder and the ground below Wednesday, their crested forms silhouetted in the snowy gloaming.
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