by Mark McDonald
Wildlife Biologist and Professional Trapper
There are two species of redbirds in East Texas. Both are the same size and the males are brilliant red in color.
The cardinal has a crown on it’s head and black face markings. The female is dull red and grey and no crown on her head.
The other species is the summer tananger. The male looks like a cardinal without a crown or black markings. The female is yellow.
I enjoy watching birds and hearing their songs. The cardinal population is high in my ranch and they pair up in the Spring and raise a family together until mid Summer. In the early Fall the pairs still spend time together. In Winter the males hangout in small flocks in greenbriars, rattan vines, honey suckle and grapevines on brush and trees. They seem to get along well and I’ve witnessed flocks of up to 35 male redbirds feeding friendly together in cold January mornings. The females as a general rule hang out together nearby in small groups and fly to and from the male feeding areas occasionally but 90% of the time enjoy one anothers company.
As Winter ends; they pair up, build nest and raise young in the Spring. At that time territorial songs are sung by the males and boundaries are set a certain distance from the nest where other redbirds are not allowed to cross or come close. Other species of non-redbirds can cross these territory lines with no conflict but if its another redbird they are aggressively attacked and run off. In Fall and Winter feeding the stations that we humans set up the redbirds come and eat going back and forth from their flock area. There seems to be very little fighting and one takes turns feeding after the other leaves if there is conflict. Often they will feed and sing together in the Fall and Winter but they songs are not nearly as loud or proud as the territorial songs of the Spring.
It was necessary for me to explain some of the cardinals’ behavior so you will fully understand this story.
100 yards north of my two story log house is a brushy, briar, vine clad area where the vines go 30 feet up into the trees and drape to the ground in a dense thicket of berry type understory brush.
This is the male cardinal hangout in the Winter and usually about 8-14 are in that location.
50 ft in front of my house is a red cedar tree that bears black single seed berries and that I have a bird feeder hanging from.
Often redbirds come to feed when its their turn – usually later in the day than the other birds.
One male cardinal had a bad habit of flying into my second story window and banging on the window pain. He would hit that window and try to get in every day at a certain time until he was exhausted and would fly back to the cedar tree to rest – all by himself.
All the other male cardinals just went back together and sang, played and hung out 100 yards north in the vine thicket area.
All Winter this weird banging on the window continued. Twice I found him knocked out on the porch. Both times he recovered.
In the Spring all the redbirds paired up except for that weird one. They all established their territories and their singing roost to guard their individual nesting territories.
My weird red bird would sing his territorial song, loud and clear 50 ft in front of my house in the cedar tree. He guarded the nest area also.
He even added material to the nest. There was one sad problem – his mate had been prey of a coopers hawk last Summer. He was alone! This was not unusual for. A red bird to either not have a mate or have lost a mate and other redbirds not paired up hung around each other and stayed out of individual pairs territory. The single birds were never alone for any length of time.
In the Spring as his territorial behavior increase, his collisions with my upstairs window increased. He spent too much time banging on my window to get inside. Or so I thought.
One day I came out to see him on the porch again knocked out from hitting the window. This time he had died.
I looked up around the window to figure out why he kept going there so I wouldn’t loose any other redbird. I saw a wasp nest and put a ladder up to get the wasp nest down. It was empty. He wasn’t catch wasp. What was bringing him to the window?
Then I looked into the window and seen my image – I was shocked! I was older, fatter and had aged considerably. I didn’t like what I saw. Then I smiled because I was happy, it didn’t matter what I looked like – I loved people, I loved God and I had a reason to live to help others and enjoy their lives with them. It wasn’t all about me.
As I was climbing down the ladder, I began realizing what the redbird had been doing that caused him to loose his life. He had been fighting himself in the mirror. He was his only real enemy.
