Northern Cardinal

Cardinalis cardinalis · Songbirds

Northern Cardinal, male

Green-Wood Cemetery, 16 February 2026

A male cardinal in a Brooklyn cemetery in February, fluffed into a near-perfect ball against the cold. Cardinals are birds of thicket and woodland edge across the eastern United States, and they stay put all winter rather than migrate, which is why this is the one red thing in a snowbound wood.

The puffing is the insulation. Trapped air between the feathers is what keeps a bird warm, and fluffing up thickens the layer at no cost, which is why a cardinal looks noticeably fatter on a freezing morning than in summer.

Northern Cardinal, male

Prospect Park, 14 December 2025

A male Northern Cardinal against fresh snow in Prospect Park, one of the few colour combinations that gets more striking the colder and greyer everything around it gets. Cardinals are year-round residents of the eastern woods and gardens, and this one will be in the same thicket in June.

That is why the species turns up on so many winter holiday cards. The name is the robe: the cardinals of the Church wore this exact red, and the colonists named the bird for them.

Northern Cardinal

Prospect Park, 14 December 2025

A Northern Cardinal in the snow in Prospect Park in December. Cardinals are birds of the thickets and woodland edges of the eastern United States, and they do not migrate and do not moult into a dull winter plumage, which is why they are the one bright thing in a snowbound wood.

The red is carotenoid, drawn from the fruit they eat, and a male that has fed well is redder than one that has not. They were a southern bird until the twentieth century, when winter feeding, suburban shrubbery and a warming climate let them spread steadily north. Much of their present range is a habitat people made without meaning to.

Northern Cardinal, female

Prospect Park, 14 December 2025

A female Northern Cardinal just lifting off a snow-dusted twig in Prospect Park in December, wings mid-beat. Cardinals are birds of thicket and woodland edge across the eastern United States, resident all year, and a Brooklyn park in snow has them in every bush.

Warm buff rather than the male's solid red, though the crest, the black face mask and the heavy orange bill carry over to both sexes. She sings, which is unusual: female cardinals sing from the nest, often answering the male's song with a phrase of their own, and the pair duet in a way few North American songbirds do.