The male is brightly colored and the female is dull. Cardinal males are bright red with a crest, a red bill and a black patch that extends down the throat and back to the eye. A younger female has a pink bill and greenish-gray feathers with a red tint to her feathers. The older she is, the more red in her feathers she is. The male and female shapes are the same but the crest and the black area around the bill of the female are smaller.
Fledglings have black and gray feathers with brownish areas underneath.
The cardinal is a year round non-migratory resident from the Dakotas, southern Ontario, Nova Scotia, south to the Gulf Coast and from southern Texas west through Arizona and south through Mexico as far as Guatemala and Honduras. The Northern Cardinal was introduced successfully in Hawaii in 1929. In Minnesota, the cardinal is rarely found in the northern areas of the state. In the mid-thirties, the cardinal was found in the Twin Cities moving north because of bird feeding supplying a food source through the winter. In January, male cardinals sing from tall trees to establish their few acre territories.