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Oct. 18, 2006 - Late this morning, while I was reading e-mail at home in
Wolfville, Pat glanced at our back-yard feeders, and called out loudly,
³Jim! Come upstairs right now! CARDINAL!!² Then we delightedly watched a
male N. CARDINAL feeding both on the ground and on my hanging feeder with
SAFFLOWER seeds, which have been ignored by our birds before this year, but
now are disappearing rapidly. A few minutes later, also a female cardinal
showed up and foraged with the male.
In late afternoon Pat saw the two CARDINALS again, together, and she noted
that the femaleıs beak was yellowish, not dark like a juvenile would have --
I wonder now how the colour of the beak changes as the young birds go from
recognizably juvenile to some older category that resembles adult. Perhaps
Peter Smith can answer that question -- of course, with multi-broodedness in
species like cardinals, there wonıt be just one time of year to look for
these changes.
Sibley gives April to Sept. as the period when brownish juvenile cardinals
with blackish beaks are present, and says the black bill changes gradually
to orange. The Nat. Geographic guide says "juvenile browner overall [than
female], dusky bill; juvenile female lacks red tones.
Cheers from Jim in Wolfville, 542-9204
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Jim (James W.) Wolford
91 Wickwire Avenue
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
B4P 1W3
phone (902)542-9204 (home)
fax (902)585-1059 (Acadia Univ. Biology Dept.)
e-mail <jimwolford@eastlink.ca>
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³There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.² -- Mark
Twain
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"Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."
- Mark Twain
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