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In my neck of the woods it has been snowing like crazy. In fact I think we set a new snowfall record for the month of December and January isn’t looking any better. So I have been taking advantage of the wintery weather and have been photographing some backyard birds. Backyard bird photography sounds easy but really it takes a lot of experience, patients and the right location to make it work. I am approaching my third decade of doing this and I still find it challenging. Maybe that is why I still do it.

Recently while sitting in the cold and snow for the umpteenth hour, I started thinking about the male Northern Cardinal that I was photographing. I often spend many hours thinking while waiting for a particular shot. I was thinking, why would a bird such as the male Northern Cardinal be so red. I mean, on this dark and snowy day in winter, the male cardinal sticks out like a, well, cardinal in a snowstorm. Honestly the red color shines like a beacon in the nearly pure white winter landscape.

Well, of course I know the scientific answer to this question but I often don’t agree, nor do I completely buy into the accepted explanation in many respects of conventional knowledge of nature. I often relay on my own personal observations and built up knowledge to come to a conclusion about a particular question or oddity in nature. Over the years I have found so many out-dated explanations and out-right mistakes in books and articles that I find myself always questioning.

The standard explanation of why male cardinals are red is simple. The male is red to impress the female. A male with a good territory with ample food resources tends to be healthier and as a result it’s redder in color. The quality of his food relates to the overall color of the bird. One of the ways females determine if a male will make a good provider is his color. The redder he is the better his territory and the higher quality his food source. After all, when the babies hatch it will be the male who will do most of the feeding of the youngster. He will need a territory with a large food resource (mainly seeds and insects) to feed the growing baby birds. So being red is simply a visual clue as to the males ability to care for future offspring. The problem I have with this is, why aren’t all male birds brightly colored? Let’s not go there.

So you must be wondering what I was thinking about. My thoughts were, being bright red is more of a handicap or liability than anything else. Being bright red would be the same as putting a sign on your back that says “eat me”. In fact there are a couple studies that show that the male cardinal is disproportionately killed and eaten by predatory hawks such as Cooper’s hawk, then are the females. This would suggest that being lit up light a Christmas tree is not always good. In fact it would be just the opposite. So this might explain why cardinals tend to come out and feed during the wee hours of the morning and after sunset.

If you feed birds in your backyard I am sure you have noticed how the cardinals don’t show up at your feeders until well after the sun is down or before it comes up in the morning. Becoming active when the light outside is low would help reduce the visibility of the male cardinal and also reduce the chances of being captured and eaten by a hawk.

So just like most things in nature, there is a delicate balance that needs to be struck between the ability to impress the girls (mating) and staying alive. After all you can’t attract a mate if you are dead. And you thought you had it hard. Try being a male cardinal for a day. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photograph who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be contacted via his web page or face book at www.naturesmart.com