Northern Cardinal

The short answer

• Cardinals will not use short perches. They need a standing surface: a hopper, a platform tray, a tray clipped under a tube, or the ground.
• Black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, striped sunflower and safflower are all top-tier cardinal foods. Safflower is the one that keeps grackles and squirrels off the same seed.
• They feed earliest and latest of any common feeder bird, often 20 to 30 minutes before other species arrive and after they have gone to roost.
• The commonest reason a cardinal skips a yard inside its range is no dense cover within about 15 ft of the feeder, not the food.

A Northern Cardinal is a heavy, thick-billed, ground-and-shrub bird that happens to be bright red. Almost everything about how it uses your yard follows from those three facts rather than from the color: it needs somewhere to stand, it cracks large seeds with a bill built for the job, and it will not cross open ground far from cover.

Telling it from the birds people confuse it with#

The male in good light is unmistakable. The problems are the female, the juvenile, and three other red birds.

Crest plus heavy conical bill plus a bird that would not fit on a tube perch: that is a cardinal.

What it does when it lands#

Cardinals are low-drama feeder birds. A pair works as a unit, and this species sits at the bottom of our flocking scale, which is a way of saying you see one or two rather than a group. Six cardinals at a feeder means it is January and territories have relaxed, not that a flock has arrived.

Watch for these:

• Timing. First bird in and last bird out. In midwinter that can be 25 minutes before the chickadees arrive, in light too dim to photograph. If you never see cardinals, look at 6am.
• The approach. Cardinal, shrub, feeder. They rarely fly straight in across open lawn. They land in cover first, wait, then make one short hop to the feeder. That is why cover distance decides whether they use a feeder at all.
• Feeding style. They sit and crack. A cardinal will stay on a tray for one to three minutes, husking seed in place and dropping hulls, rather than grabbing and leaving. That makes them easy to watch and it means they need a surface that supports a stationary bird.
• No caching. Unlike jays and chickadees, cardinals do not carry food away to store it. What they take, they eat, so their consumption is a straight measure of their appetite.
• Dominance. Middling. A cardinal displaces House Finches and chickadees and yields to jays, grackles and squirrels. Male cardinals will chase females off a feeder in spring, then feed them beak to beak a few weeks later during courtship.

Feeding them on purpose#

Cardinals are unusually easy to feed well because their preferences are broad and their top four foods are all cheap and widely sold.

Skip for this species: Nectar.

The practical setup, in order of what changes the most:

1. A standing surface. A hopper feeder or an open platform tray is the right shape. If your only feeder is a tube, clip a wrap-around tray under it: that single part converts a small-bird feeder into a cardinal feeder for the price of a bag of seed. A low ground tray works just as well, because cardinals feed on the ground readily.
2. Safflower, if you have competition. Cardinals take safflower as readily as sunflower, and grackles, starlings and most squirrels do not. Expect a two to three week adjustment while the regulars work out that it is food. The full trade-off is in safflower versus sunflower.
3. Cover within 15 ft. A hedge, a dense shrub, a brush pile. Not touching the feeder, but within one short flight of it. See native plants and cover.
4. Height. 4 to 5 ft is fine. Cardinals do not want a feeder at rooftop height, and a low feeder near cover gets used more than a high one in the open.
5. Leave the spill. The seed knocked out of a hanging feeder by chickadees and finches is a cardinal feeder in itself, as long as the ground beneath is not bare open lawn.

Four reasons yours has not arrived#

Work down this list. Each has a distinct signature.

• You are outside the range. Cardinals occupy the East, Midwest, South and Southwest. They are essentially absent from the Pacific Northwest, the northern Rockies and most of California. The range has expanded north over the last century and now reaches southern Canada, but no feeder will pull one into Oregon.
• No cover. The classic empty-yard case: a feeder on a pole in the middle of mown lawn, 40 ft from the nearest shrub. Chickadees will use it, cardinals will not. Move the feeder toward the hedge, or bring cover to the feeder with a brush pile or a large pot.
• Only short perches. Covered above, and worth checking before anything else if you own a single tube feeder.
• You are looking at the wrong hour. A pair may make two visits a day, both in near darkness. Before concluding they are absent, check at first light for three consecutive mornings in winter. The wider version of this checklist is no birds at my feeder.

Squirrels and grackles emptying the feeder before dawn is the fifth cause and it looks like absence: the cardinals arrive to an empty tray. If the feeder runs dry every day by 9am, fix the squirrel problem first and the cardinals return without any other change.

Through the year#

Winter. Peak feeder use, peak numbers, and the season when several pairs tolerate each other at one station. Sunflower and safflower in a covered hopper stay dry through snow, which matters more than the seed choice in January. See winter bird feeding.

Spring. Territories re-form, males sing from high perches from February onward, and window attacks begin. Feeder visits become brief and paired. Courtship feeding, where the male passes a seed directly to the female, happens on and around feeders from March.

Summer. Visits drop as insects take over the diet, especially for nestlings, which are fed almost entirely on invertebrates. Cardinals raise two and sometimes three broods, so juveniles with dark bills appear at feeders from June through September. Keep water available: in July a bird bath outperforms any seed you can put out.

Fall. Molt, including the occasional bald-headed bird, then a steady climb in feeder use from October as natural food runs out. This is the easiest season to establish cardinals at a new station, using the sequence in attracting birds to a new feeder.

Frequently asked questions#

What is the best food to attract cardinals?

Black oil sunflower is the standard answer and it is correct, but safflower is often the better one. Cardinals rate safflower as highly as sunflower, and grackles, starlings and most squirrels largely ignore it. That combination means a safflower feeder can be a cardinal feeder in practice. Sunflower hearts also work and leave no hulls, which matters if the feeder is over a deck. Skip nyjer entirely: cardinals rarely touch it.

Why won't cardinals use my tube feeder?

A cardinal weighs around 45 g and cannot balance on a 2 in perch stub. It is a physical exclusion, not a preference. Clip a wrap-around tray to the base of the tube, or hang a hopper or platform feeder instead, and cardinals will feed on the same seed they were previously taking off the ground below. Perches of 4 in or more are usable; anything shorter is a small-bird feeder.

What time of day do cardinals come to feeders?

Earlier and later than almost anything else. Cardinals are among the first birds at a feeder in the morning half-light and the last to leave at dusk, often feeding 20 to 30 minutes outside the window when other species are active. If you only look at your feeder at midday you may conclude you have no cardinals when a pair visits twice a day in low light. Check at first light in winter to find out.

Why is my cardinal bald?

Late summer molt. Some cardinals and Blue Jays lose all their head feathers at once rather than gradually, leaving a black or gray scaly head for a few weeks in August and September. It looks alarming and is usually normal, with feathers regrowing before winter. Persistent feather loss with crusty skin and swollen eyes is different and can indicate disease, in which case take the feeder down and clean it.

Do cardinals stay all winter?

Yes. Cardinals do not migrate. The pair in your yard in July is the pair in your yard in January, and winter is when they use feeders most heavily because natural seed and fruit are gone. In late fall they become more tolerant of each other and you may see five or ten in a loose group at one feeder, which breaks up again into defended territories in early spring.

Why is a cardinal attacking my window?

It is a territorial male fighting his own reflection, most common from March to June. He is not confused about glass, he is responding to what looks like a rival that will not back down. Break the reflection from the outside with soap, screening, tape strips or netting; blinds and stickers inside the glass rarely work because the reflection is on the outer surface. The behavior stops when the breeding season ends.

Sources and further reading

1. Northern Cardinal Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Measurements, range, diet and breeding behavior
2. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Foods and feeder types that suit cardinals
3. Guide to North American Birds: Northern Cardinal National Audubon Society Range expansion and habitat use