Going for a splash of color tonight after a couple of grey days. I did get a splash of rain also. A 10 minute shower. It was not enough, but more than we've had and I am thankful. So we will celebrate tonight with a bright morning sunrise and a parade of baby cardinals (4th and 5th batch). I actually had a comment that someone did not like the baby cardinals because they look sickly and diseased. Just to be clear: none of the birds are sick. They go through a molting phase where they get the red color. Sometimes, they are a little spotty looking for about a week. This is their babyhood stage and I think they look very cute. If someone does not want to see them, skip down to the sunrise Kite! Something for everyone! Enjoy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cardinal
Northern Cardinal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a North American bird in the genus Cardinalis; it is also known colloquially as the redbird or common cardinal. It can be found in southern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and south through Mexico. It is found in woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps.
The Northern Cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of 21 centimeters (8.3 inches). It has a distinctive crest on the head and a mask on the face which is black in the male and gray in the female. The male is a vibrant red, while the female is a dull red-brown shade. The Northern Cardinal is mainly granivorous, but also feeds on insects and fruit. The male behaves territorially, marking out his territory with song. During courtship, the male feeds seed to the female beak-to-beak. A clutch of three to four eggs is laid, and two to four clutches are produced each year. It was once prized as a pet, but its sale as a cage bird is now banned in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
| Northern Cardinal | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Male in Ohio, USA | |
 | |
| The female lacks the vivid red color | |
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Cardinalidae |
| Genus: | Cardinalis |
| Species: | C. cardinalis |
Description[edit source]
The Northern Cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of 20–23.5 cm (7.9–9.3 in) and a wingspan of 25–31 cm (9.8–12 in). The adult weighs from 33.6–65 g (1.19–2.3 oz), with an average 44.8 g (1.58 oz).[6] The male averages slightly larger than the female.[7] The adult male is a brilliant crimson red color with a black face mask over the eyes, extending to the upper chest. The color becomes duller and darker on the back and wings.[8] The female is fawn, with mostly grayish-brown tones and a slight reddish tint on the wings, the crest, and the tail feathers.[9] The face mask of the female is gray to black and is less defined than that of the male. Both sexes possess prominent raised crests and bright coral-colored beaks. The beak is cone-shaped and strong.[8] Young birds, both male and female, show the coloring similar to the adult female until the fall, when they molt and grow adult feathers.[10] They are brown above and red-brown below, with brick-colored crest, forehead, wings, and tail.[4] The legs and feet are a dark pink-brown. The iris of the eye is brown.[4] The plumage color of the males is produced from carotenoid pigments in the diet.[11]Coloration is produced from both red pigments and yellow carotenoid pigments.[12] Northern Cardinal males possess the ability to metabolize carotenoid pigments to create plumage pigmentation of a color different from the ingested pigment. When fed only yellow pigments, males become a pale red color, rather than a yellow.[12
Distribution and habitat[edit source]
Northern Cardinals are numerous across the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and in Canada in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Its range extends west to the U.S.-Mexico border and south through Mexico to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, northern Guatemala, and northern Belize. Anallopatric population is found on the Pacific slope of Mexico from Jalisco to Oaxaca; note that this population is not shown on the range map. The species was introduced to Bermuda in 1700. It has also been introduced in Hawaii and southern California. Its natural habitat is woodlands, gardens, shrublands, and swamps.[1]
Ecology[edit source]
Song[edit source]
The Northern Cardinal is a territorial song bird. The male sings in a loud, clear whistle from the top of a tree or another high location to defend his territory. He will chase off other males entering his territory. He may mistake his image on various reflective surfaces as an invading male, and will fight his reflection relentlessly. The Northern Cardinal learns its songs, and as a result the songs vary regionally. It is able to easily distinguish the sex of another singing Northern Cardinal by its song alone.[13]Mated pairs often travel together.[14]
Both sexes sing clear, whistled song patterns, which are repeated several times, then varied. Some common phrases are described as "cheeeer-a-dote, cheeer-a-dote-dote-dote," "purdy, purdy, purdy...whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit," "what-cheer, what-cheer... wheet, wheet, wheet, wheet"[15] and cheer, cheer, cheer, what, what, what, what[16] The Northern Cardinal has a distinctive alarm call, a short metallic 'chip' sound. This call often is given when predators approach the nest, in order to give warning to the female and nestlings.[4] In some cases it will also utter a series of chipping notes. The frequency and volume of these notes increases as the threat becomes greater.[4] This chipping noise is also used by a Cardinal pair to locate each other, especially during dusk hours when visibility wanes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise
Sunrise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Terminology
"Rise"
Although the Sun appears to "rise" from the horizon, it is actually the Earth's motion that causes the Sun to appear. The illusion of a moving Sun results from Earth observers being in a rotating reference frame; this apparent motion is so convincing that most cultures had mythologies and religions built around the geocentric model, which prevailed until astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus first formulated the heliocentric model in the 16th century.[3]
Architect Buckminster Fuller proposed the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse" to better represent the heliocentric model, though the terms have not entered into common language.
Beginning and end
Astronomically, sunrise occurs for only an instant: the moment at which the upper limb of the Sun appears tangent to the horizon.[1] However, the term sunrisecommonly refers to periods of time both before and after this point:
- Twilight, the period during which the sky is light but the Sun is not yet visible (morning), or has just passed out of visibility (evening). The beginning of morning twilight is called dawn.
- The period after the Sun rises during which striking colors and atmospheric effects are still seen.[2]
Appearance
Colors
See also: Atmospheric optics
Air molecules and airborne particles scatter white sunlight as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere. This is done by a combination of Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering.[6]
Rayleigh scattering by smaller particles
Pure sunlight is white in color, containing a spectrum of colors from violet to red. When sunlight interacts with atmospheric particles much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering occurs. In this process, light is scattered in various directions, with shorter wavelengths (violet, blue, and green) being scattered more strongly than longer ones (orange and red).[7][8]
Because of this effect, the Sun generally appears yellow when observed on Earth, since some of the shorter wavelengths are scattered into the surrounding sky. This also makes the sky appear increasingly blue farther away from the Sun. During sunrise and sunset, the longer path through the atmosphere results in the removal of even more violet and blue light from the direct rays, leaving weak intensities of orange to red light in the sky near the Sun.[9]
Mie scattering by larger particles
The intense reds and peach colors in brilliant sunrises come from Mie scattering by atmospheric dust and aerosols, like the water droplets that make up clouds. We only see these intense reds and peach colors at sunrise and sunset, because it takes the long pathlengths of sunrise and sunset through a lot of air for Rayleigh scattering to deplete the violets and blues from the direct rays. The remaining reddened sunlight can then be scattered by cloud droplets and other relatively large particles to light up the horizon red and orange.[10] These larger particles, with sizes comparable to and longer than the wavelength of light, scatter light by mechanisms treated by the Mie theory.
Mie scattering does not depend heavily on wavelength, but it has the largest effect when an observer views the light directly (such as toward the Sun), rather than looking in other directions. Mie scattering is responsible for the light scattered by clouds, and also for the daytime halo of white light around the Sun (forward scattering of white light).
Without Mie scattering at sunset and sunrise, the sky along the horizon has only a dull-reddish appearance, while the rest of the sky remains mostly blue and sometimes green.[11][12][9]
Ash from volcanic eruptions, trapped within the troposphere, tends to mute sunset and sunrise colors, whereas volcanic ejecta lofted into the stratosphere (as thin clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets) can yield beautiful post-sunset colors called afterglows and pre-sunrise glows. A number of eruptions, including those of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and Krakatoa in 1883, have produced sufficiently high stratospheric sulfuric acid clouds to yield remarkable sunset afterglows (and pre-sunrise glows) around the world. The high-altitude clouds serve to reflect strongly-reddened sunlight still striking the stratosphere after sunset down to the surface.
Sunrise vs. Sunset colors
Sunset colors are sometimes more brilliant than sunrise colors because evening air typically contains more large particles, such as clouds and smog, than morning air. These particles glow orange and red due to Mie scattering during sunsets and sunrises because they are illuminated with the longer wavelengths that remain after Rayleigh scattering.[6][10][9][13]
If the concentration of large particles is too high (such as during heavy smog), the color intensity and contrast is diminished and the lighting becomes more homogenous. When very few particles are present, the reddish light is more concentrated around the Sun and is not spread across and away from the horizon.
A sunrise Kite was up early this morning. Just barely enough early light-
(There are about 10 hummers here now!)
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