🐦“Pre-pope”
🇧🇷Cardeal do norte
🇺🇲Northern Cardinal
📖(Cardinalis cardinalis)
Ok, I have to be honest, I couldn’t let this one pass without a funny name, but literally translating wouldn’t do, for its name is already the Portuguese translation. I took advantage of the fact that a certain conclave was approaching back when I first wrote about them and tried to stay on theme. These 25cm birds are called like this because their vivid red plumage resembles Catholic cardinal’s outfits. A gorgeous red color that comes from metabolising carotenoids acquired from their diet. Being a sexually dimorphic species, the females are reddish-green with a red tuft on their heads. In some cases, the brighter a male is, the less he helps with nest duty (sounds familiar?) and the ladies are faced with the choice of either good genetics or a helpful hand with the nest. Occurring from the south of Canada, all the way across eastern USA, Mexico and a bit of central america, this bird is very abundant in North America and represents 7 USA states! They basically feed on grains and fruits, but can also eat small insects. Very territorialist individuals, they defend their land with… the power of their beautiful songvoices! But apparently they have a strong bite, so in case you missed the vocal warning, they won’t hesitate. Maybe that’s why they served as inspiration for the main guy from Angry Birds.
If you have bird suggestions for the next ones, we’ll gladly take them!
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_cardinal
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinalis_cardinalis
https://www.oiseaux.net/oiseaux/cardinal.rouge.html
https://animalia.bio/index.php/pt/northern-cardinal
Birds of a Feather Talk Together podcast ep. 10
The Science of Birds podcast: The Northern Cardinal