The Morning of the Injured Cardinals

If you were my neighbor this morning, you might wonder why the crazy person next door was running out of her house and yelling a lot. Well there is a good explanation for all the ruckus. There was a mean cardinal chasing a nice cardinal in my backyard and because of it the nice one flew into my window. Upon being stunned to the point of near paralysis, the mean cardinal came in for the kill. I couldn’t let this happen, so I scared off the mean cardinal and then sat by my back door while the stunned nice one sat at the bottom of the stairs to protect the nice one until he felt good enough to fly away. This took around an hour, in the meantime the mean cardinal kept making bold attempts to kill the poor injured guy so I kept opening the door and yelling at it to go away.

Eventually, the nice one started feeling better and hopped from his position at the base of the stairs to the top of the stairs…maybe to say thank you for protecting him? He sure did look thankful.

Unfortunately and surprisingly while I was watching the first little guy finish recovering I heard another thud at my other window! I ran to the other window and there was another cardinal laying on her back on the ground! This time a female. I didn’t take a photo of her on her back because it was too depressing. I felt lucky that the male was recovering and wasn’t sure that this little girl would be so lucky too. I went back to check on the first one at the top of the stairs, and within a few more minutes he flew away. Immediately after the mean one started attacking him again, so I ran out of my house in my robe and slippers chasing them to get the mean one to leave the nice one alone. By this time this nice one was feeling good enough to be scared by me too, so they both flew off, the mean one still in a fighting mood. I heard a bit more ruckus and then they were gone.

At that point there was nothing else I could do for the nice one since he was no longer on my stair so I decided to try and flip the female cardinal onto her belly instead of her back thinking she might get oriented faster that way. I had already ran through the snow and soaked my slipper, so I figured what could it hurt? I grabbed a stick to flip her and surprisingly she grabbed onto it…to which my first thought was “OMG I have a bird on a stick!”.

I brought her back to the stairs so I could keep on eye on her while she recovered. Clearly nothing was broken. While I was moving her I got Robert to snap a couple pictures, then I left her and came in to warm up. About 30mns later Robert opened the door to yell at a blue jay and she flew away and looked just fine. Luckily nobody was trying to attack her.

Since then I have seen a male cardinal at the bird feeder. I’m pretty sure it’s the mean one. My guess is that he chased the nice one out of the yard and having defended his territory left the nice one alone. I hope the nice one finds a good home in someone elses yard. The female however, is still around, she’s already been back and had some seed. I’m really glad they both made it…otherwise, there may have been tears.

I felt a little guilty for enjoying the close up I got of these birds, the male in particular has gorgeous coloring and if you get up really close there is almost a bluish tint to the tips of the featers on his back. Inspiration is always exciting no matter where it comes from, especially when you get to help save cute little critters in the process. : )

If you’re interested, there are more cardinal pictures here, and also some pictures from “Snobama Day” (i.e. on inaguration day it snowed here in the Eno Valley of NC and I got some nice shots on a hike I took that afternoon.)