Under Clear Skies

Leucistic Northern Cardinal - James Van Acker

After the interesting gynandromorph and leucistic Cardinal pictures (see above) on my blog recently and my mention that both male and female Northern Cardinals sing, my wife got in on the act and sent me this interesting article about Cardinal vocalizations (here). Appears that the old male Cardinals aren’t the quickest on the uptake when it comes to learning songs. In fact they lag rather noticeably behind their female counterparts in learning smarts. I have the feeling that my wife was trying to hint at some general inference here! Anyway an interesting piece of research about a common backyard bird.  The Science Daily Website also has a host of other interesting articles about bird song, animal intelligence etc and is well worth a perusal.