The Cardinal I3 



adds character and tone to its voice, and makes of it the fine 

 singer that it is. 



The cardinal is not a migrant. In this regard its history 

 is unique and interesting. Originally it was a bird of the 

 south. But gradually they have extended their range until 

 now they are found in Iowa, Indiana, southern New York, and 

 casually in Maine, Ontario, southern Michigan and Minnesota 

 and west to Kansas and Texas. As I have already said, Jan- 

 uary 4, 1898, I found a pair of them in the timber strip bor- 

 dering Fall Creek at Buzzard's Roost, and seemingly very 

 happy, notwithstanding it was a very cold day and the earth 

 was covered deep with snow and thereabouts they could 

 have been found every day in the years which have gone by 

 since then. In his interesting bulletin, Some New Facts 

 about the Migration of Birds, Mr. Wells W. Cooke says that 

 the lives of many cardinals and quails are spent within a circle 

 of ten miles. Mr. James Lane Allen evidently understood this, 

 for in The Kentucky Cardinal he says : "With almost every- 

 thing that he touches this high herald of the trees is in con- 

 trast. Among his kind he is without a peer. Even when the 

 whole company of summer voyagers have sailed back to Ken- 

 tucky singing and laughing and kissing one another under the 

 enormous green umbrella of nature's leaves, he still is beyond 

 them all in loveliness. But when they have been wafted away 

 again to brighter skies and to soft islands over the seas, and 

 he is left alone on the edge of that northern world which he 

 has dared invade and inhabit, it is then amid black clouds and 

 drifting snows that the gorgeous cardinal stands forth in the 

 ideal picture of his destiny." 



I am convinced that the cardinals mate for life. The pair 

 I found at Buzzard's Roost in 1898 have been seen near the 

 same place whenever I have gone there. At Somerleaze a pair 

 of them can be found upon the lawn at any time of the year. 

 By the first of April they are nest building. The nest is built 

 in a bush or vine, usually three to ten feet from the ground 

 and sometimes in the vines that drape the walls and screen 

 the windows of residences ; occasionally they are built in the 

 tree tops. The pair at Somerleaze built their nest in a cedar on 

 our front lawn about four feet from the ground and this gave 



