Missing: Cardinals

[winelover]

Winelover send me your snail mail add. The wife will send you all of the pileated W P you want. She strongly dislikes them. When they come to eat the suet we put out for the birds. They do miner damage to our log home. Kevin

We have, in addition to the Pileated..........Downy's, red headed, red bellied, hairy's, yellow bellied sapsuckers, flickers, that peck.

The Pileated is the only one I've never seen pecking on my exterior cedar beams. The smaller woodpeckers are a nuisance at the hummingbird feeders, too.

Winelover

[Jedman]

I am in NW OH and I have a lot of cardinals at our feeders. Cracked corn and black oil sunflower seeds seem to be the best.

Jedman

[Thundarstick]

I had dozens of them, but they seemed to disappear. Once they where the first birds to the feeder and the last to leave. I finally figured out an owl was stalking the feeders during the twilight hours, preying on the cardinals. The owl has since passed on to the great hunting grounds, and I'm seeing more and more cardinals and other birds returning to the feeder.

[30calflash]

I;ve a couple around in my yard in Ct but I've not noticed them lately. But i've not been out in my yard lately much either.

Besides habitat loss could it be the commercial end of things like roundup and the GMO modified grains that are grown here? If it's not the best for us what does it do to the bird population?

[Traffer]

If it is true that the Cardinal population is in rapid decline, it is very concerning. Cardinals are long-lived birds that do not migrate. I believe a pair can stay around the same place for many years. (there is some fake information on the internet saying that their normal life spans are 3 years. That is pure mis-information) Here is a citing of the facts :"The oldest wild cardinal banded by researchers lived at least 15 years and 9 months, although 28.5 years was achieved by a captive bird"
Since the late 80's the Cardinal population in my area has been coming back. It got to be in the 70's they were getting rare. I suspect like many other birds it was because of DDT.
There is a sound logical reason for the decline of raptors (cardinals are not raptors) . Windmills are chopping them up in the thousands. Consider that owls and hawks like to sit on the highest point to scan for prey and a windmill is ALWAYS placed in the highest spot otherwise it wont work well. I watched a Hawk once trying to perch on a moving windmill. It was only a matter of time before he would get killed.
Sorry for the stray off topic there ...Hawks will take cardinals if they can get them.
I sure hope it is not true that something is killing off cardinals. They are my favorite bird.

[gwpercle]

A year round resident in Louisiana , I have been putting out sunflower seed in feeders for them for the last 45 years . Usually had 4 to 5 pairs as regulars at the feeders . A few years ago a developer bought the wooded property on my left side and behind my property to build houses .
He cleared all the big and small trees . Now I see 1 or 2 pairs of Cardinals and it's a result of habitat loss I'm sure ... no place to build a nest .
Our area has become a Hot place to live because during our last flood...our street never even flooded, this section of town is extremely high in elevation ... and that has become valuable .
Great for me but not so good for the birds who used to live in the now gone trees.
Gary

[edp2k]

There is a sound logical reason for the decline of raptors (cardinals are not raptors) . Windmills are chopping them up in the thousands.

I call BS on this right here.

I frequent an area that has ~200 windmills all within viewing distance and look around under the windmills frequently.
There are NEVER any dead birds under a windmill.
Do you really think that a bird, especially a raptor/predator, who evolved to outsmart and hunt prey birds who are
dodging, ducking, and weaving for their life in 3D airspace,
and must do this on a daily basis to survive, can't figure out and can't avoid relatively slow moving rotors 300' tall,
which are anchored to the ground (have been for years) and only move in a 2D plane?

I guess you never heard the phrase "eyes like a hawk".

Leftist talking points.

[Traffer]

I call BS on this right here.

I frequent an area that has ~200 windmills all within viewing distance and look around under the windmills frequently.
There are NEVER any dead birds under a windmill.
Do you really think that a bird, especially a raptor/predator, who evolved to outsmart and hunt prey birds who are
dodging, ducking, and weaving for their life in 3D airspace,
and must do this on a daily basis to survive, can't figure out and can't avoid relatively slow moving rotors 300' tall,
which are anchored to the ground (have been for years) and only move in a 2D plane?

I guess you never heard the phrase "eyes like a hawk".

Leftist talking points.

You may be correct. It might be just fake news. However here is one guy that didn't make it;

[Thundarstick]

There are MORE hawks, owls, and eagles now than at any time in my 56 years on this ball! What do you think they eat? I'll give you a hint, it ain't hominy, it's meat! It takes A Lot of meat to keep the number of raptors I see around here in business. We've brought back flying coyotes, protected them from depredation, then wonder why small game and song birds are on the decline. Ever wonder why our for fathers shot "chicken hawks", wasn't cause they where eating up the cotton and corn!

[Traffer]

There are MORE hawks, owls, and eagles now than at any time in my 56 years on this ball! What do you think they eat? I'll give you a hint, it ain't hominy, it's meat! It takes A Lot of meat to keep the number of raptors I see around here in business. We've brought back flying coyotes, protected them from depredation, then wonder why small game and song birds are on the decline. Ever wonder why our for fathers shot "chicken hawks", wasn't cause they where eating up the cotton and corn!

That puts it into perspective.

[DanishM1Garand]

I’m in central Ohio I’ve seen some this week. I don’t know exactly where as I wasn’t keeping track. They aren’t the most common bird. I can’t remember a time when they were very common.

[fiberoptik]

I know some song birds will go south for the winter . But I know the Cardinals do not.

Got one in Jax, Fl. Lives at neighbors.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[koger]

I was just telling the wife the other day, I saw 9 Cardinals, at one time around our feeder, and they were very bright colored. We must have them all down here.

[FredBuddy]

Saw ONE today at lunch.

Hopefully there will be more soon.

[km101]

We even have a few cardinals here in the Lone Star State. Last spring a pair nested in our plum tree. They ran our young cat back into the house from the back yard. Now he sits on the patio and looks carefully to be sure they’re not around before he ventures into the yard. Haven’t seen them lately but when the feeders go out I hope they will return.

[Eddie Southgate]

Tons of them in Tennessee and Alabama .

[largom]

ROUND-UP probable cause of cancer in humans! What do you think it does to wildlife? I have noticed a great decline in birds where no-till farming is used.

[jsizemore]

I call BS on this right here.

I frequent an area that has ~200 windmills all within viewing distance and look around under the windmills frequently.
There are NEVER any dead birds under a windmill.
Do you really think that a bird, especially a raptor/predator, who evolved to outsmart and hunt prey birds who are
dodging, ducking, and weaving for their life in 3D airspace,
and must do this on a daily basis to survive, can't figure out and can't avoid relatively slow moving rotors 300' tall,
which are anchored to the ground (have been for years) and only move in a 2D plane?

I guess you never heard the phrase "eyes like a hawk".

Leftist talking points.

Maybe not thousands but..............

https://www.audubon.org/news/duke-en...ind-facilities

I watched cardinals, wrens and finches working over the leaf litter out my bathroom window while brushing my teeth this morning. Squirrels have been really active lately.

[Traffer]

Maybe not thousands but..............

https://www.audubon.org/news/duke-en...ind-facilities

I watched cardinals, wrens and finches working over the leaf litter out my bathroom window while brushing my teeth this morning. Squirrels have been really active lately.

From the Article:
"The avian mortality at Duke's two sites isn't rare. Turbine's spinning blades kill around a half-million birds a year, and even more bats. A study published in September in the Journal of Raptor Research found that wind farms in 10 states have killed at least 85 eagles since 1997, with most deaths occurring between in the last five years. Of those birds, 79 were golden eagles that struck wind turbines. (That doesn't include the eagles killed by the decades-old turbines at California's Altamont Pass.) The raptors smash into turbines because they don't see them: When hunting, they keep their eyes on the ground, scanning for food."

[edp2k]

You don't think that audubon is biased?
The article claimed that 85 eagles are dead since 1997.
22 years.
85 birds / 22 yrs = 3.8 per year.
ho hum, if true, which I doubt, and I doubt that they are telling the whole, unadulterated story.
I am sure that the power company didn't contest anything so that they didn't
have a PR problem with the antis protesting.

On the same page I see an article headlined 'Protect Birds from Climate Change'.
Another hoax.

When the same liberal sources claim that guns cause crime, I guess that must be true too.

Frankly, I think we should ban glass windows since birds often crash into them and die,
not knowing they are solid.
If it only saves 1 bird its justified, right?

> The raptors smash into turbines because they don't see them:
> When hunting, they keep their eyes on the ground, scanning for food.

A telling and ignorant statement.
A lot of a raptors diet is other birds, and guess what, their prey are flying around up in the air,
in 3D airspace, because they are just passing by or they saw the raptor (or its shadow)
and are now bobbing and weaving like crazy to avoid being eaten.
The prey is not dumb and neither are the raptors, else either or both would have been extinct
millions of years go.

I swear, these leftists are so dumb, next they will want to put millions of animals on welfare
because they think that the animals are too dumb to feed themselves ("raptors only look at the ground").
I got news for them: raptors didn't evolve over millions of years and
successfully get to the top of the food chain by being stupid.
A stupid bird starves or gets eaten, and then doesn't reproduce and goes extinct.