He kept coming nearer to the house. At last he flew pell-mell into our porch. It seemed as if the wind had blown him in. On a little shelf behind the windshield he alighted and stayed.
After a while another bird flew to the little shelf. I hadn’t noticed this bird before, my attention being taken up with the cardinal. This second bird was reddish green. In my little bird guide I had seen pictures of the two cardinals, so I knew that she was the red one’s mate.
The cardinal pecked at her when she went to his side, and the meek little bird just clung to the shelf. The next day I made a shelf for her just below his.
At dusk the cardinals returned, silently, even stealthily, as though they thought it unwise to publish their presence. Again he was a little ahead of her, and he flew to the new shelf. She alighted on the edge of the upper one. After a while she tripped a little farther in, to a more comfortable place. When she was settled, he went to her shelf and snuggled down beside her. Maybe he was sorry that he had acted so selfishly the day before. I never saw him peck at her again.
Every stormy day that winter the cardinals came to our porch at evening. They became so confiding after a week or so that he usually announced their arrival with a few low hissing notes, something like “Tset, tset, tset!” Sometimes he would perch on the upper shelf, sometimes on the lower. Mrs. Cardinal was a peace-loving bird. She always came last, and took the empty shelf. Usually he would change so as to sit beside her. They were always gone in the morning, no matter how early I came out; and when they came in the evening it was usually dusk. So I never got a picture of my cardinals on the shelves.
Mr. Cardinal finally got so he sometimes came to the lunch on the snow; but his favorite feedery was a tray in my neighbor’s yard, which I kept supplied with shelled peanuts and shelled corn. The English sparrows could not manage these large kernels, so the cardinals had this feedery to themselves. This may be the reason why they preferred it to the one on the ground.
But the cardinals must have procured much of their food elsewhere, for they came only about once in three or four hours to get a dainty at the tray. Strange to say they never came together. Always he came first and ate a while, then sometimes she would come, too. It seemed as if she let him come first, then, seeing that he stayed, she took it for granted that all was well.
THE CARDINAL’S FAVORITE FEEDERY
In March the cardinals stopped sleeping on the porch. About that time I began to hear almost daily a new song. It sounded like,