A cardinal

I came upstairs shortly after 9 to check things on the laptop, but first I had to close the window a little because the breeze was still blowing and it is a little cool. I noticed a movement and heard a flutter on the deck outside the window. I had the camera close by but don’t have an image because the light was already too low and I didn’t want to panic our visitor any more than she was already panicked.

I have worried that something happened to the male cardinal that was so present the winter and spring of 2009 because after last summer there was no more lyrical singing from the pine trees and no more flash of red as the cardinal we considered ours headed for the relatively secluded feeder that is under the canopy of the magnolia in front of the house. Of course he wasn’t ours, he was the neighbourhood’s cardinal, and I wondered what had happened. I talked to my older brother who is a much better birder than I am, and he reassured me that our cardinal might not in fact have been caught by a cat or other predator and might have just moved on. I was relieved to hear that, but it didn’t stop me from missing his bright presence over the past year.

JE in St. Catharine’s has had both a male and female cardinal come to his feeder, and he did point out that the female is even more wary than her wary mate. I had looked at images of the female and had watched the trees in our yard closely, especially when the male made his careful way to the feeder. However, I had never seen one, and once our male was gone for at least a year, I figured there was little chance of seeing a female around here.

Thus, I was both surprised and delighted to see a female cardinal on our top deck this evening. The only problem was that she was trapped there. I watched her fly over and over against the glass panels, fluttering her wings with her bill touching the glass and then landing again on the bottom rail. I wanted to go out and find some way to either help her or frighten her enough that she would fly up and out, but I resisted. I was worried I might make her hurt herself, like breaking a wing, so I stayed very still at the window and watched. Each time she would walk along towards the gap between the panels, a gap that was plenty big for her to get through, I would silently encourage her, but then each time I thought she would make it she would look at the sky and fly up against the glass again. And again.

So I saw my first female cardinal again and again, captive on our deck, and wondered what I could do to help her escape, until she finally found her way to the gap and flew off as I had hoped she would.

So if she is in the neighbourhood, maybe he is too. I filled the feeders today and will keep my eyes peeled and my ears tuned for any sign of her happy red partner.

Footnote: I do realize from checking about cardinals that this one might have been an immature, so it's possible I may still not have seen a female -- should have had the presence of mind to note what colour its bill was!