“The Northern cardinal–male version–is about as red as a bird comes, so no wonder that it turns up on Christmas cards,” says Ellen Blackstone, my friend at the public-radio show BirdNote, the repeat guest for our series of bird-themed Q&As.
In the story that follows, Ellen provided me with green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss; click them. Information on how to hear BirdNote daily is at the bottom of the page–and if you want to give thanks to nonprofit BirdNote for all their wonderful avian “aha’s,” you can do so at this link.
A little inside-birding humor: A friend of Ellen’s once did “a CCBC, a Christmas Card Bird Count” (playing with the name of the famous Christmas Bird Count; details at the bottom of the page) and came up with the cardinal at Number 1, black-capped chickadee at Number 2, and the European robin in third place.If traditional Christmas colors are red and green, why no green birds on the cards? Well, how many green birds have you seen out your window?
“The only green bird we see in the United States–and this only in far-south Texas, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley–is the green jay,” says Ellen (photo above). “And that’s really more chartreuse, with a bold blue head, so it doesn’t classify as ‘holiday colors.’”Any more red birds to be seen? The house finch is common from coast to coast, border to border, except for the Plains states, and the male (above)–depending on what he eats–can be very close to red.If there is a pair of birds that epitomizes the holiday season, it would probably be the male and Read more on awaytogarden.com