Q Lately I've seen a mangy-looking female cardinal at my Roseville feeder. She's missing neck feathers and has a scraggly crest. She's sometimes accompanied by a male without any feathers on its head.

But the female cardinal does have a crest. ... Plumage is a term that refers to the characteristics of a bird's feathers. Shown here is the normal plumage of an adult northern cardinal.

In forests far from urban areas, female cardinals mate with the males with the brightest red feathers. The brighter the feathers, the healthier the bird. But in urban areas, female cardinals are ...

Mr. Yellow, a male northern cardinal with a rare genetic mutation that causes his feathers to be yellow instead of red caused a sensation when he was photographed in Alabaster, Ala. in 2018.

At the end of January, I heard a northern cardinal sing. Birdy, birdy, birdy. What cheer, cheer, cheer. A crimson-red male sat at the top of the tree and sent out his advertisement to a nearby female.

The bluebird feeds mainly on insects and other invertebrates (such as moths, worms, flies, ants, etc.), but they will search for berries, especially in winter. You will often see them perched on wires ...

As it turns out, the easiest way to tell the difference between a male and female cardinal lies in the bird's coloring. As is ...

Scarlet Tanager. Several red birds look like cardinals at a glance. Scarlet tanagers have solid red heads and bodies with black wings and tail feathers. These migrating birds tend to stay high in ...

There are two types of cardinals: the spring, summer and fall cardinals—and they are beautiful—and there are the winter cardinals—and they are spectacular.

Peggy Guthrie of rural Long Grove, Iowa, snapped this photo of an unusual female northern cardinal sitting in her weeping mulberry tree. I forwarded it to Steve Hager, an associate professor of ...

A female and male northern cardinal. | Diana Cooper/GettyImages. For the remainder of this article, we’ll be focusing on the northern cardinal, the most famous species in the United States.But ...

Young cardinals have a coloring similar to female cardinals, regardless of their sex. A MALE cardinal only acquires the characteristic red coloring after it molts and grows adult feathers.