As I write this post in early August, juvenile Northern Cardinals are everywhere. They’re eating black oil, safflower, suet and mealworms — just about everything. One of the cameras caught Dad feeding Junior. As you will see in the video, Junior was deeply into being stuffed with live mealworms!

As the video goes on, you’ll see Dad leaving Junior to fend for himself. Poor Junior. He seems to notice at first that his worms taste less delicious than the ones Dad was feeding him. But — he never does realize that he is eating the dried mealworms tossed along side a cup of live ones.

One last comment. Since I just did a post on distinguishing between juvenile male and female Cardinals, one has to at least guess which this is. I’ll put my guess (and it is a guess) at the bottom of this post*.

 

* Based on the red splotching on the face … my guess is:  Juvenile Male … but it’s just a guess.