Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) are a common backyard feeder bird. But while the male’s bright red feathers make this a hard species to overlook, this is the first northern cardinal nest I’ve ever seen. This is likely due to the fact that although they tend to build their nests low to the ground (1 to 15 feet high), northern cardinal nests are generally wedged into a fork of small branches in a thick shrub or tangle of vines, where it is hidden and protected by the dense foliage. This particular nest exactly fit that description, as it was approximately 3 feet off the ground in a thick section of American Holly branches. I would have overlooked it entirely from the “outside”, but the proximity of the holly to a window allowed me to notice the nest from inside the house. 

A nest constructed by a northern cardinal typically takes between 3 and 9 days to build, with the finished product having an inner diameter of about 3 inches. It is the female who does most of the nest building, bending pliable twigs around her body and pushing them into a cup shape with her feet to create an outer layer, and then lining the nest with bark, grasses, and pine needles. Their clutch size ranges from 2 to 5 eggs, each of which are around 1 inch long and grayish- or greenish-white with dark gray to brown spots. The eggs are incubated by the female for 11 to 13 days.