#Northern Cardianls

[uwmspeccoll]

A Cardinalidae Feathursday

The Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks  (Pheucticus ludovicianus) in our neighborhood have just been chattering away this early summer. The call of the Cardinal is quite distinctive, but we often confuse the call of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak with that of the American Robin. Some say the Grosbeak sounds like a Robin that has had better music lessons, but we have a hard time telling them apart. What do you think?

Both are members of the family Cardinalidae. The only other species in that family that lives in our area (that we know of) is the Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea), which also sounds remarkably like a Robin, but hoarser. The images shown here are from a 1930 painting by American nature artist Walter Alois Weber reproduced in Bird Portraits in Color by the American physician and ornithologist Thomas Sadler Roberts and published by the University of Minnesota Press in the 1934. The volume includes 92 color plates by five wildlife artists illustrating 295 North American species. 

The three birds in the upper left of this plate are winter male, female, and male nestling Rose-breasted Grosbeaks; in the upper right are a fully adult breeding male and first-year breeding male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks; at bottom are adult female and male Cardinals.

View other posts from Bird Portraits in Color.

View more Feathursday posts.