The Playful Cardinals

This path in the photo is a very special place. It is in a small section of the forest that is right next to a huge meadow. The meadow was to my back as I took this picture. This is an area that very many types of birds like to gather. And that is exactly what I saw, but this was a little different.

Whenever I come to this place I begin looking for birds so might get a few lucky pictures of something. I like to stand in this path and wait for the birds to come out. It almost never works because of my impatience. I usually give up and look for other adventures, after I get a few very blurry pictures.

As I arrived at the entrance to this path this time something strange happened. From the trees on the left, at about as high as my waist, a Cardinal flew across the path almost too fast to see. As I stood there feeling slightly stunned another one shot by! Then after the second one was gone a third cardinal flew past! Zip! I got one blurry picture, without any cardinals.

I was kind of irritated with everything that just happened, so I decided I was just going to go back to the meadow and look at something else. After only a few seconds I saw something in the trees at the edge of the forest. It was another bird!

This bird wasn't just another bird though. It was a female cardinal! It was the first female cardinal I had ever seen! A male cardinal is colored a brilliant red, so it is usually pretty easy to see. Go here to see a few pictures that are a little better. The females on the other hand are not as brilliantly colored. They are mostly light brown with maybe a little red.

If you click on the picture you can see the bird a little better, and I circled it to make it even easier. But wait, there's more! Not only is there a female in the trees, there is a male in the tree behind the female! Both of these birds were watching me.

After they finally left, I got distracted with other things so I made my way up the meadow path beside the forest. While I was taking pictures (I do a lot of that), I saw some more movement in the trees. It couldn't be more cardinals could it?

Yes it could! These cardinals seem to have been following me up the trail. They were watching me through the trees! I changed the direction of my camera towards them and began trying to get a few good shots, even though they were mostly hidden by the branches of the trees.

I got only a few decent shots of this one bird. The female was also there, but that picture wasn't so good. After the birds left, I also decided to reenter the bigger section of the forest. The cardinals weren't going to follow me in there. It had been fun playing with these playful cardinals, but there were other things to see and more adventures ahead.

I want to remind you to follow the links in this and my other posts, because they can lead to very interesting places.