EASTERN CARDINAL 13 



the highest note recorded on his fihn was 4375, and the lowest 2200 

 vibrations per second. 



Young cardinals begin to sing at an early age. Mrs. Laskey (1944) 

 writes: "The first songs of immature Cardinals are very soft war- 

 blings, totally imlike adult song; these 'indefinite' warblings are 

 called 'ancestral/ 'primitive/ or 'tribal' by various authorities (Nice, 

 1943). I have records for four j^oung cardinals singing in August, 

 two wild birds and two hand-raised, free-flying females. One of the 

 latter began warbling at three weeks of age, the other at four weeks. 

 One of the wild birds (probably a female) appeared to be about a 

 month old; the other, a male, nearly two months old, used some adult 

 phrases in his lengthy warbling performance." 



Enemies. — In addition to the well-known predators, furred and 

 feathered, that prey on all small birds, the cardinal seems to have a 

 number of troublesome enemies among other birds. Perhaps the 

 worst of these is the cowbird, of which Friedmann (1929) says that 

 the cardinal is a "fairly common victim. * * * In some places this 

 bird seems to be one of the commonest hosts, while in other locahties 

 its status is quite different. * * * The Cardinal is parasitized chiefly 

 in the central parts of its range, as the Cowbird is a rare breeder along 

 the Atlantic seaboard south of Virginia * * * There is a case on 

 record of a Cardinal building a two-storied nest, the lower floor con- 

 taining two eggs of the Cowbird (M. ater obscuriis)." 



Mrs. Horace P. Cook (1934) says of a pair of cardinals that nested 

 for several years near her home: "In the summer of 1932 they 

 first nested in the yard of a neighbor to the east of us, in a dense 

 shrub, but cats or Blue Jays destroyed the nest and the eggs were 

 thrown out on the ground. They then built in the yard west of ours, 

 about eight feet up in a mulberry tree, where sprouts grew upright, 

 making a perfect nesting site. But when the yoimg were beginning 

 to feather, a pair of Blue Jays tried to do away with them. The 

 brave parents fought them off in a terrific battle, to come out victors, 

 although the birds were barely saved." 



House wrens sometimes puncture the eggs of the cardinal, and 

 catbirds and English sparrows occasionally compete with them for 

 nesting sites. 



Harold S. Peters (1936) lists two species of lice, one fly, one mite, 

 and three species of ticks, as external parasites of the eastern cardinal. 



Dr. Rudolph Donath, of the Commimicable Disease Center, Depart- 

 ment of Health, Education, and Welfare, Atlanta, Ga., writes Oscar 

 M. Root that the cardinal has been found to carry antibodies of the 

 eastern equine, western equine, and St. Louis encephalitis. 



D. A. Zimmerman (1954) mentions four birds found dead on high- 

 ways, and Andrew J. Berger writes Taber of seeing a fox squirrel 



