Saturday, August 29, 2009

A Day-Making Family of Cardinals!

Yesterday, after the morning drizzle stopped, we had a very pleasant soft-light day of clouds in Knoxville (east Tennessee). I sat outside for a while and read, enjoying the moderate air, camera handy, of course.
I also wanted to see how the molting Northern cardinal family looked, Mom with her heavily molting head, and Dad, last seen with a disarray of crest feathers and gray down showing here and there.
Above you see the male on August 11th, with many of his crest feathers already missing. And below you can see how he appeared yesterday, on August 28th. In a little over two weeks he had molted all his crest feathers, many head and facial feathers and had produced feather sheaths to protect newly growing feathers. The tiny feathers poking up on his crown in the image below are the brand new ones growing out beyond the sheath. And what looks like gray whiskers are the sheaths for his new black facial feathers.
It's the 'tween time for cardinals and many other birds, the molting season, a time when juveniles are still following parents around begging, but the hectic pace of nesting and fledging season is over. Young can now fly and are learning to forage for themselves.
Molting female cardinal with juvenile perched below her.

It's also a time when molting birds need a bounty of food to help nourish them through the energy-demanding task of producing new feathers. And for year-around residents in Tennessee, these new feathers include a thicker layer of down, making ready for the winter months.
Molting, or the shedding and replacing of worn feathers with new ones, occurs in all birds but at different times, with different frequency and rates, all of which perfectly matches the bird's habits, seasonal cycles, available food sources and migration patterns. And despite the look of disarray, molting occurs in an orderly and gradual fashion with most birds retaining their ability to fly while molting. Waterfowl are an exception, rendered temporarily flightless with a complete postbreeding molt due to body aerodynamics.
Northern Cardinal juvenile.
Besides having fun watching this cardinal family interact, I noticed the juveniles were molting, too. So I checked my new book, National Geographic Birding Essentials by Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn that I purchased through Wild Birds Unlimited and delved into it a little more.
There is a great deal of variation among species as to how long a juvenile keeps its first plumage.
Molting may occur for some juveniles before leaving the nest! In other species, such as the Bald Eagle, a series of partial molts over a five year period changes the plumage appearance several times before the young eagle reaches breeding age and acquires the distinctive white head and tail of the mature adult.
For these two juvenile cardinals trying to share a perch, the wait will not be so long. In only a few months they will have acquired the distinctive orange beak and brighter adult plumage that we all enjoy in our backyard cardinals.
Linked to Bird Photography Weekly #53 at Birdfreak.com to celebrate the conservation of our world's birds and Bird Photography Weekly's second anniversary.

13 comments:

  1. Are they not pitifully beautiful~ Is that a word? Love that you got these wonderful shots. I got one of a bird the other day, molting and I think it is a Robin. It was such a mess, hard to tell. Great photos, per usual~

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  2. Great photos. Moult is such a fascinating process especially where the bird changes color so dramatically.

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  3. Thanks for all the great info on molting....I didn't know it was so highly varied for different species! It's amazing how different those cardinals look compared to the spring.

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  4. oh those cute little baldy molting birds...
    they look so sad this time of year.

    Oh it happens to the best of us..LOL
    Great post! photos are marvelous.
    must tweet this one out to twitterville!

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  5. I love watching the young cardinals fledge as they look like gawky teens. Great photos.

    dan

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  6. Excellent series Vickie!

    We had a Blue Jay recently that was completely featherless from the neck up.

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  7. A very interesting group of pictures. It is such a shock to see them molting if you never have before. I'll never forget a couple of years ago taking a picture of what I thought was a beautiful male cardinal and when I put it up on the computer screen, his head was completely bald.

    Although I have never commented here before, I must say I your artwork is awesome also......Janice

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  8. Great series - molting birds sure don't have the handsome appearance we are accustomed to, but they are interesting and prompt all kinds of associations - like bad hair day, frazzled by the kids, and so on

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  9. Oh my gosh..well you don't need me to tell you how fantastic these photos are. I was interested in the molting info as I have a bald blue jay here now. LOL. The feeders are busy and soon my BOSS will start really disappearing to the cache. The mallards are returning to the pond after their molt. I am hoping that the wood ducks will too. --Michelle--

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  10. Ohhh...poor little Red! They will be prettier than ever soon, but for the time being, they are ...interesting! :-)

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  11. Great post about molting Vickie. It is so nice to have a garden and to be able to study the birds like this. Thanks for sharing.

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  12. Great series of molt photos Vickie. Thanks for all the excellent information too. They always look rather scruffy don't they?

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  13. Vickie, great shots of the cute little molting bird. Losing their feathers and still feeding their babies.

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