I have seen a lot of baby birds around the yard and feeders lately, including these two cardinals. They are almost as big as the parents, but still seem dependant upon their parents for feeding. In the first photo, the male cardinal feeds one of the fledglings, while the other one looks on. (Photo was taken from a distance without my zoom lens.) I have watched these two big “babies” eating from the feeders on their own, but still they flutter and chirp to be fed by their parents! Click photos to view larger.
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Male cardinal feeding one of the fledglings
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Cardinal fledglings at the feeders
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I have also seen several baby goldfinches this year around my bird feeders. The first one below is on my bird bath, and the others are eating seed from the ground beneath the feeders. Aren’t they cute? (Click here to see a much clearer closeup photo I took a couple of weeks ago of a baby goldfinch.) The parents are often nearby, feeding from the thistle feeder.
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Goldfinch fledgling
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Baby goldfinches and male and female at feeder
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Related posts:
Black and White Warbler
Brown-headed Cowbird
Hummingbirds
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First,I’m a bit envious of your goldfinches. We have sightings of them once or twice a year. They don’t seem to eat thistle in these parts! I don’t know what they eat, but I need to figure it out. We have house finches mostly.
No cardinals here, either. And when I go back to Missouri,I try to get pictures, but they seem a bit camera shy.
Our not-so-intelligent house finches are on the borderline of being annoying… but not quite there. Except that they eat all the grape jelly from my oriole feeder. I don’t really mind that, except that yesterday a fledgling got stuck in the sticky mess, so I had to carefully extract it and give it a bath in my kitchen to get all the jelly off.I always feel like goldfinches are a bit more intelligent than the house finches.
Hi Louise,
How strange that they don’t eat thistle there, that’s all they will eat here! I see flocks of them around my thistle feeders, but never at any of the other types of feeders.
Oh my, it’s good that you saw that baby bird stuck in the jelly! :)