Bishop birds are far more noticeable due to their unusual diagonal flight.
I refuse to be a pawn in your silly game.
But they have really nice rookeries.
We have the occasional Cooper’s Hawk around here, and I once saw one nail an unsuspecting pigeon, swooping down from behind and killing it, scattering feathers and tearing it apart right then and there. I presume a male cardinal, sitting exposed on a high branch, whistling loud and clear, might be a pretty good target for one of those babies.
Also reminds me of a time that I was in a tent one eveing and listening to a whipoorwill calling out in the woods. I heard “whip oor will…whip oor willl…whip oor will…whip oor AWK! AKK! EEEEEE! aah” and then nothing. Sometimes animals advertise their whereabouts to their own demise.
Well, yes, obviously they do occasionally get caught by predators. But a cardinal will get caught by predators much less often than a similarly-colored rodent would (which is probably why there aren’t any similarly-colored rodents).
Yeah, male cardinals can be pretty aggressive about defending their territory. One evening, a barred owl was in our backyard. I’d have never known it was there except for one pissed-off male cardinal who kept harassing the owl, "CHEEEEP!!"ing away, all through dusk, until it was too dark for him to feel safe anymore. That cardinal raised such a ruckus I finally went outside to see what was going on, and spotted the owl.
Still, for my money, there’s nothing funnier than an adolescent male cardinal in half-molt. This time of year, they’re everywhere: gawky, awkward teenagers trying desperately to look more handsome than they really are.
Ah, yes. We had a thread some time ago here on the topic of how those owls got spotted. Now we know.
The Toronto Blue Jay is the same way.
That’s going to cause confusion, especially if the poor thing has a mate. You should go find it and paint it barred again.
After reading a bunch of posts on sexual traits, I misinterpreted this remark for a second.
As a predator, I’d have to wonder if a bright red bird tasted like cherry or strawberry. Strawberry would be fine but if it was that nasty fake cherry flavor, I’d have to pass. And while pondering all this the cardinal would probably be thinking “ooh, a predator! I’d better hide”. Then I wouldn’t get a chance to find out if it was strawberry or that nasty cherry. Raspberry would have been good, too. It’s easier to just stick with the obviously bird-flavored birds.
“Stotting” is the term.
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Could be I’m not right, but that sentence just about made me piss myself laughing.
For what it’s worth a red bird against a green background is not very obvious to a colour blind predator.
Lots of cardinals and other bright colored birds live around my place, and you hardly ever see anything but the local cat population preying on them. High up in the tree is pretty safe. The occasional hawk or whatever might get them, but their primary predators are on the ground. Flying is all they need.