Sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, suet or even broken up peanut, offer them, and they will come. If you are lucky enough to have one, carotenoid-rich bright red berries from dogwood trees are also a favorite. Diet plays a part of why they are red. So, why so red. You would believe that bright red would be a easy visible target for hawks and owls. However, by responding to redness as a sign of a promising mate, females have encouraged the evolution of bright coloring in males. This process is called sexual selection. It turns out that male cardinals are probably bright and loud for the same reason: to advertise what good mates they’d make. Sexual selection is often powerful enough to produce features that are harmful to the individual’s survival. For example, extravagant and colorful tail feathers or fins are likely to attract predators as well as interested members of the opposite sex. for more click here

Anyway, just sit back and relax and forget about all the science for a few minutes and watch and listen in your back yard.

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

Click on and image for nature at it’s colorful best

While noted science writer Ed Yong has not written specifically about a “color-changing female cardinal,” the striking phenomenon of females altering their colors or displaying unusual variations comes down to two well-documented causes in nature:

- Diet and Molting: Female cardinals are typically brownish-gray with hints of red. However, some females can display brighter, more reddish-orange feathers depending on their diet during late-summer molting. If they forage on foods rich in yellow carotenoid pigments (like honeysuckle berries), those pigments process into red and become deposited into their plumage. [1, 2, 3]
- Genetic Anomalies (Gynandromorphism): Some cardinals are spotted with a perfect half-male, half-female split. This rare genetic anomaly means the bird expresses both male and female genetics, resulting in a vibrant red wing on one side and a dull, female-colored wing on the other. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Louise: “How did you get here?”
Johnny: “Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

“You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes … Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing — On his darkest day he believes in spring.”