# Talk:Northern cardinal

I'm not sure that the picture used in this article is a Northern Cardinal. Northern Cardinals have red beaks, but this one's beak is yellow-orange. See [1] and [2]. Bryan 03:15, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The Pyrrhuloxia has the identical range maps for, (approximately) Mexico, and Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Baja California Sur.
For northern Sonora, AZ, NM, these are the Sky islands, also called the Madrean sky islands.  See Talk:Pyrrhuloxia. ....--Michael,in HOT,YumaAZ-- --Mmcannis 16:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
How old do cardinals live to be?
===The range map is inaccurate....it completely leaves out the population along the Pacific coast of Mexico from Jalisco to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  --Natureguy1980 (talk) 21:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone else think that there are too many similar pictures in the gallery?  Joyous! | Talk 23:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I put them there, and yes, I think there are too many. I was hoping that someone involved in the article would select a few to keep and delete the remainder. The nesting photos are a rare thing and I offered them all, assuming someone would select a few that looked good enough to keep. Peace.Lsi john 03:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and cleaned up the gallery a little bit. I grouped the nesting photos together and added a few from Commons.'Card 22:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I've done a lot of tinkering with the images on this article over the last few days. It initially caught my interest when that excellent shot of the fledgling got deleted and that screwed up the page's formatting, but then I just kept farting with it. I think the layout and the overall appearance of the article is much-improved, but if anyone is unhappy with any of the edits I've made, please feel free to revert or re-edit them. Thanks. 'Card 00:51, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's a link to a flickr image that was dropped beneath the gallery: [3]. It's rather nice so I moved it here. I have no idea how I can find out from which flickr user it originated, to see how it's licensed. --Amalthea (talk) 22:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

This article's Good Article promotion has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write.  This is how the article, as of November 10, 2007, compares against the  six good article criteria:

1. Well written?:  Well-written, and complies with the Manual of Style.
2. Factually accurate?:  Has adequate citations to the reliable source material in the references.
3. Broad in coverage?:  Considering that this is the type species for cardinals in general, I think it's imperative to include some info on their status as a cultural icon (the moniker for sport's teams etc.) Adding this as a couple of sentences to Relationship with humans is probably the best place in my estimation.  There also isn't any information in the article about what predators the bird has.
4. Neutral point of view?:  Gives fair treatment to all significant points of view.
5. Article stability?  Not the subject of any recent or on-going edit wars.
6. Images?:  Properly accounted for with licensing where present. There are two issues I want to address here. The first is not a pass/fail issue related to the criteria. I want to consider possibly paring down the gallery, there are some very poor images that are also repetitive within the article or used in articles directly connected to this one. The other is captions. I personally like the centering trick, but some of the captions are italicized, and some not. Even though MOS:ITALICS and WP:CAPTIONS do not outright prohibit italicized captions, I don't think it's necessary. None of the reasons of MOS for italicizing (emphasis, titles, etc.) seem to apply. But ultimately the issue is that the system of captioning needs to be consistent internally.
Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved.  After 48 hours the article should be reviewed again.  If these issues are not addressed within 7 days, the article may be failed without further notice.  Thank you for your work so far.— VanTucky Talk 03:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


### Notes
For readability, please place any comments or questions pertaining to the hold below rather than within the body of the review. Thank you'!
I've completed what I think is sufficient cleanup of the gallery. VanTucky Talk 03:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The gallery looks much better now, thank you. The italics are now removed from the image captions. Ecology is a more accurate heading, especially now that predation information has been included. heyjude. 04:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Looks like everything is finished. Thanks for all your hard work, and congrats. I was just about to pass it, and a comment above made me realize...the article doesn't give their lifespan. Did I miss it? VanTucky Talk 04:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
fixed and reffed, passing Jimfbleak 16:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Please see your talk for additional comments on the pass. I agree it is ready, but you did not complete the passing correctly. You also need to remove it from the candidates page and add it to the main GA page. Thanks, VanTucky Talk 20:21, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be an edit war developing over the inclusion or otherwise of a map. It is my view that a partial map is better than no map, but please seek consensus instead of just reverting each other's edits jimfbleak (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the intervention, Jim - but I already started a discussion on his talk page in order to accomplish the same thing, and I think we've established an agreement about it. I didn't put it on the talk page here because there were several articles and maps involved. - Ken Thomas (talk) 18:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Are their beaks known to turn black for any reason ? I have a picture of what I assume to be a male cardinal except that the beak is a spotty black instead of orange. The plumage on the chest is also spotty red and gray. Could it be a cardinal in poor shape ?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.104.88 (talk) 22:44, 7 February 2010 (UTC) 

- Nevermind, I just found out that it's a juvenile.76.113.104.88 (talk) 02:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems like image overload in this article.--NYMFan69-86 (talk) 01:10, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Female cardinals will also attack non-present enemies in glass surfaces; I see this at my home regularly.
74.79.44.126 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 23:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC). 

Is this species commonly referred to as just "cardinal" in the United States? I've doing some research to expand the Spanish article about the brown-headed cowbird and I wasn't sure about what species they referred to when they said "cardinal" whithout any adjective or scientific name. Pablo.ea.92 (talk) 06:17, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

In Canada, most just use Cardinal as the name, I am fairly sure the same is true in the US. Dger (talk) 14:43, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
The page intro paragraph states: "The northern cardinal [...] is also known colloquially as the [...] cardinal (which was its name prior to 1985)."  Prior to 1985?  Does anyone have more info?  Why 1985? —ShinyG 22:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

In the past month, we've had three different images of a female Northern Cardinal in the infobox. First, there was File:Northern Cardinal Female-27527.jpg. Then I changed it to File:Female cardinal.jpg, saying "Switching images of female cardinal because (1) higher resolution, (2) face can be more clearly seen, (3) facing the same direction as the male above". And finally, User:Snowmanradio changed it to File:Cardinalis cardinalis -Massachusetts, USA -female-8.jpg with the comment "probably a better infobox image".
Now, all three are great female cardinal images, and any would do just fine. But I personally think option #2 (File:Female cardinal.jpg) is the best example. Option #3 is also good, but I find the background grass distracting, especially above the bird where the grass is blurry. I was wondering if anyone else had an opinion on which female cardinal image should be shown in the infobox. – Quadell (talk) 12:25, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I think image #1 is the best: it's clear, it shows the whole bird (and plenty of the face), and it doesn't have a distracting background. I like it that it's facing the opposite direction to that of the male.  #2 looks a bit like a juvenile to me, and its colors aren't as vibrant as those in #1.  #3 has too much going on in the background.  I'm not going to change the picture in the article (which I note is none of the above), but that's my opinion.  J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 22:48, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Is the male of the species the one that is used for the logo of St Louis Cardinal's baseball club???User:JCHeverly 13:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

[many years later]: Yes. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:47, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The article asserted,

It is able to easily distinguish the sex of another singing northern cardinal by its song alone;
for which it cited Charles T. Snowdon and Martine Hausberger, Social Influences on Vocal Development (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 119.  All Snowdon & Hausberger say on p. 119 about cardinals is this:

In the northern temperate species studied, song by females is usually less complex or more variable than song by males.  Female song functions in intra pair and family group cohesion in some species, such as northern cardinals . . . .
I started out just fixing the strange phrasing of the article's sentence ("It is able to easily distinguish") but decided to check the reference.  Finding that the authority cited does not support the assertion, I have deleted the latter.  J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 22:40, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

On this wikipedia page, Northern cardinals are said to mate for life without a reference (aside from a link to the Pair bond page) but the Cornell Lab of Ornithology page says that up to 20% split up each season: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Cardinal/lifehistory  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Met228 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC) 

Recently a large amount of material has been added, mostly to the distribution section, but none of it has been referenced. I have reverted this for the time being. In the summary of this edit it is stated that the material is derived from "summarizing 8 or 10 reputable publications". The IP editor should feel welcome to reinsert the information, but only if these sources are named. Please keep in mind that all material must be referenced - this is not optional but a requirement. Previous to the revert, the paragraph gave the impresssion that all information was sourced to the IUCN entry, which is plain misleading. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:59, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Definitely not Northern Cardinals.  Or at least they don't appear to be to me, a non-expert but cardinal enthusiast.  In the section "Ecology" (subheading "Song") there's a picture of two birds with the caption "The male often feeds the female as part of their courtship behavior".  Possibly this was meant to illustrate a general behavior in many different bird species, but if so, the caption does not indicate that.  I don't feel expert enough to make a change myself, however, so can someone review? AnneTG (talk) 16:29, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

It looks ok to me. They just have their crests down, but the coloring, proportions, eye, and bill are all good identifiers here. I mean, I wish it were a higher quality image but they are cardinals. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

It kinda sad to see this very popular article of a bird being horrible right now as a GA. 2001:4455:30B:6C00:B8D0:C9D8:9325:569F (talk) 10:22, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Flowers 137.118.84.221 (talk) 23:16, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

FYI, in case someone disagrees, I just changed the "male" image in the infobox from File:Cardinal.jpg to File:Male northern cardinal in Central Park (52612).jpg. The sharpness/resolution is better, without the bird seed on the ground. The pose is different, but there are other photos in the article already which view it from the side. YMMV. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:00, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello! This is to let editors know that File:Male northern cardinal in Central Park (52612).jpg, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for December 25, 2023. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2023-12-25. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page.  If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.9% of all FPs 11:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC) 

Near the end of the "Description" section, this statement appears: "Cardinals have the ability to drop their body temperature 3 to 6° if needed."  This comes from the website footnoted.  However, neither this article nor the reference has units for the degrees.  Perhaps someone can locate a better reference that would make this clearer?  I was unable to. N9XTN (talk) 00:30, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I could try, but I probably won't be successful Neko Lexi (talk) 15:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
I was not successful in finding it, sorry Neko Lexi (talk) 15:52, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

There were two FPs in the infobox of a male and female (FP on Commons and on English Wikipedia). In this edit they were replaced with a single image. The new image isn't bad, but lacks a lot of the detail at full resolution and isn't as good compositionally IMO (left tail cut off, no head room, sitting on man-made object rather than in a tree, etc.). I'm not going to revert myself, though, as there's room for debate and I took the two photos that were removed. Bringing it here for discussion. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:17, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I dislike the new image for the same reasons you mentioned. I don't see how the new image is an objective improvement. It's less aesthetic/flattering while offering no greater detail to the viewer. And their crests are down, which really isn't a big issue, but for me at least the crest is sort of the cherry on top for an image of a cardinal, especially for the first image that a reader sees when viewing the page. I would support reverting to the original two images. pillowcrow 18:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
Totally agree. I have reverted the image change in the infobox. Saschaporsche (talk) 18:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)