EASTERN CARDINAL 7 



modate. When nine days old, one of them swallowed, without 

 choking, a grub two inches long and as large as a lead pencil." 



At a nest McAtee (1908) watched for Qji hours, the young were fed 

 178 times, an average of 89 times each. The longest interval between 

 visits was 35 minutes and the shortest was 2 minutes. G. M. Sutton 

 (MS.) says the adults turn then* heads sideways to feed the young, 

 as the food is far back in the gullet. 



Mrs. T. E. Winford writes of watching the female lead two full- 

 grown young into a garage to feed them grubs taken out of a dislodged 

 wasp's nest. 



Apparently, three or four broods of young are often raised in a 

 season; probably three broods are raised normally, as nesting begins 

 early and ends late in the season. W. E. Shore writes to me that one 

 pair, in Toronto, built five nests in one season, and another pair 

 raised four broods successfully. 



J, Van Tyne (1951) observed a male which, with its beak filled 

 with the type of green worms it had been seen feeding the young, 

 stopped at a feeding tray, disgorged the worms onto the shelf, cracked, 

 ate some sunflower seeds, picked the worms up again, laid them down 

 again, ate more seeds, then picked them up again and flew off pre- 

 sumably to feed the young. He repeated the procedure a second time 

 later in the day. 



Plvmages. — Dwight (1900) describes the natal down of the cardinal 

 as "mouse-gray." Of the juvenal plumage, in which the sexes are 

 alike, he says: "Above, sepia-brown, wings darker and suffused with 

 dull dragon's-blood and brick-red, the tail, crest and forehead largely 

 brick-red, traces of black on lores and chin. Below wood-brown, 

 cinnamon tinged on throat, sides and flanks." 



A complete molt occurs in August, or earlier in early broods, pro- 

 ducing in the male a scarlet plumage practically indistinguishable 

 from that of the adult and much veiled with olive-gray edgings. The 

 first nuptial plumage is acquired by wear, the loss of the gi"ay edgings 

 intensifying the bright red of the spring plumage. There is no molt. 

 Adults have a complete postnuptial molt in late summer and the 

 brighter male spring plumage is acquired by wear. The sequence of 

 molts is the same in the female, but she never assumes the full red 

 plumage, although her crest, wings, and tail are tinged with dull red . 



Food. — In his excellent paper on the food of the grosbeaks, W. L. 

 McAtee (1908) gives the results attained from the examination of 

 nearly 500 stomachs of this species. The examination showed that 

 "the bird's diet is about three-tenths animal and seven-tenths 

 vegetable." 



The animal food consists almost entirely of insects. He lists 51 

 species of beetles, including ground beetles, click beetles, wood borers, 



