Northern Cardinal
Cardinals are one of the first singers of the year. They belt out their crooner crossed with car alarm tunes starting around Valentine’s Day. How romantic. As one of the first species to break into song each spring they offer us an exciting marker for the end of winter, and they give beginning birders a great opportunity to learn the cardinal’s song when they are still working solo acts. In mid-Febuary, not a lot of other songs are out there to compete for our attention or confuse things.
Male cardinals do the majority of the singing, and those males are bright red. In the Midwest if there’s snow on the ground, cardinals are the only bright red bird you’re going to see. (In the summer, various tanagers can compete for the brightest of red birds, but they would be a rare and exciting spots, whereas cardinals, although always exciting, are rarely— well— rare.) As a common bird with a loud voice who solos for several weeks before other birds start competing for airplay, cardinals are a great place to start if you’re hoping to build a foundation around which to build your bird identification practice.
The cardinal song is a mix of extended yet seperated downward notes followed by a super slow trill that sounds like a car alarm. Jump to about 0:19 to get the full cardinal effect.
What do you think? Does the cardinal sound a little like comeback-era Elvis? The males boast the style of Elvis circa an off-night version of Viva Las Vegas. They sport the high pompador (called a crest in elite birding communities), their guady red attire outshines even a bejeweled jumpsuit.
Do you hear the crooner crossed with car alarm? Compared to other regional species, the cardinal’s song can be called melodic. It occupies a songbird middleground as neither complex nor simple. Like a car alarm, it’s loud and repetetive.
In another shout out to Cornell Labs, check out the Macaulay Library. In this treasure-trove of recordings, you can explore what feels like a limitless collection of audio files for species around the world. The recordings play along with a real-time visual readout of the audio. The visual lends a physical shape to the song’s construction giving cues for pitch, tempo, pauses, and patterns.
I find this to be the coolest resource. I love having access to this extra level of context. We’ve come a long way from when I was learning to identify birdsongs in large part by reading the song descriptions in my field guide. My Sibley Guide (duct-taped along the spine from overuse) writes out the cardinal song as soundling like “slurred whistles woit, woit, woit, chew chew chew chew chew.” The above text in the car alarm image is equally vague. It’s hard to describe sounds using words. Speaking of which, as a way to afford your practice even more context, it can be helpful to try to explain the song to someone else or use your field journal as a place to describe what you hear. Use whatever works to trigger your memory and help you assoiate this crimson crooning car alarm with the Northern Cardinal.
But wait… the ladies!
Female birds often get overlooked when birders are first beginning to practice identification. Birds are commonly sexually dimorphic, meaning males and females of a species differ in physical characteristics. Females are often drabber in coloration and not as vocally active as males. That means females demonstrate fewer quick and ready markers for identification.
Females in general are rad there’s no doubt. If I overlook females here, it’s because you must first learn the obvious before you have the capacity to recognize the subtle. In birds and many species, males trend towards the obvious.
Anyhow, female cardinals are subtly beautiful with sandy coloration augmented with orange highlights and a saturated orange bill. All cardinals like to visit backyard feeders, so feeding stations are a place where you’re likely to see cardinals in all their forms. Back to the lounge act— cardinals tend to linger at feeders late into the evening. Think of them like groupies lingering at the lounge long after the less audacious birds have flittered off to bed.