One of three baby cardinals peeks over the edge of its nest in an evergreen tree. The other two remain unseen as they lie down in the shallow concave.
Within a small evergreen, a collection of bendy twigs rested snugly in the crook of branches. It was a nest. And it was occupied. Wearing gray feathers tinged with a blush of red, a cardinal was barely visible as she sat on the nest, completely covering the top. Aside from her long tail that jutted sharply out of the nest and her bright orange beak, she was almost invisible.
The cardinal built the nest herself, sculpting and weaving and lining it just so. Her partner, a flashy red male with a talent for singing, would perch nearby as she constructed the vessel that she, of the two, would be using the most. When the nest was complete, the cardinal was able to sit comfortably inside it. And she was doing more than sitting; she was brooding eggs beneath her.
An egg hatched. The cardinal, Mom, stood on the edge of the nest and peered into the depression. A tiny, pink, helpless baby bird flailed about. Succinct chirping preceded the male cardinal, Dad, as he made his way to the tree. He carried a small green caterpillar in his beak and passed it to Mom who delicately fed the hungry hatchling.
This process of feeding, where only Mom directly gave the hatchling food, continued until the second egg hatched the following day. Then Dad directly fed them as well. The third and final egg hatched on the day after that. Each baby cardinal had its own birthday.
The nest was a busy place. Both parents flew back and forth with various arthropods in tow to feed the little ones. At first, the cardinals would merely lift their heads with open beaks aimed in any direction when they heard Mom or Dad chirping as they approached the nest. Soon they increased both their strength and awareness that enabled them to face their parents as they arrived, beaks aimed and ready to accept grub.
Mom chewed the food, breaking it up into smaller pieces, before feeding the baby birds. Dad would try to do the same, but his efforts were not as thorough as Mom’s. One time he fed a baby cardinal a big beetle, and the baby cardinal fell over. A quick recovery did follow.
It is easy to wonder if food is evenly distributed among a nest full of baby birds. Bigger, more demanding birds tend to hog the front in order to quickly gobble up whatever their parents bring home. This situation started to play out only for Mom to deliberately pass her two boisterous children in front and feed the little cardinal in the back of the nest.
The cardinals grew up quickly, accumulating a soft, gray fluff of feathers and advancing from hatchlings to fledglings. They liked to stretch their wings and climb over each other in the increasingly cramped nest. One day they turned down food for the first time. They were more interested in preening and climbing around.
On the day after the food refusal episode, two of the fledglings left the nest in the early morning, abandoning the only place on Earth that they had ever known. One little cardinal stayed behind.
The third fledgling was alone and appeared antsy in the nest that had become much roomier. Mom and Dad periodically checked on it and continued to feed it. Eventually the cardinal hopped out of the nest and onto a higher branch in the tree. It hopped higher and higher, reaching the top where the foliage was at its most dense. Every time the little bird let out a chirp, the branches shook. A full day went by before the third cardinal, too, left the tree.
If the tree seemed empty before it had been occupied by a family of cardinals, it seemed even emptier after they left. But the nest is still there. Caringly arranged, the shallow basket of twigs that was made by a bird and served as the setting of three cardinals’ grand entrance into the world remains. The tree is hardly empty.