Beautiful Classic
Oh I wish you'd had a time-lapse set up!

Though it reminds me how alien baby birds look.
An ex told me a story of how as a child he thought he had found a troll who had crawled out of a drain - turned out to be a baby bird fallen from its nest.

Cic
Cute, but I can't help think of this
Not for those who don't like to face the reality of their food

Cool, I have Cardinals that hatch out a brood in the Yew by my front door every year. You're lucky to have an observation point that won't freak Mama bird.

Nice pics, classicman. And for Bruce, too: I have a line of yews across half the front of the house, and sometimes cardinals nest in there. About three years ago, the nest was right in front of the bathroom window. I could see only Mama's head from the window, but I'd get a closer look every day outside.

Then one day the eggs were totally missing. Calls to bird people reinforced my suspicions that blue jays or, more likely, crows had taken them for breakfast :sniff: (both of these are in abundance in the neighborhood--as are cardinals, robins, mourning doves, etc., fortunately). Could've been a raccoon or opossum, too.

Last year I was pruning a forsythia, and a cardinal came flying out when my head was just a couple feet away from its nest in an adjoining shrub. Glad it's not the attacking kind! The next few days, but only if the parents were off, I'd look at the cardinal eggs in the nest, and I showed the neighbor whose peonies are close to the forsythia, by standing behind the peonies and bending the branch down enough. But I must've showed the predators, too--the eggs were soon gone! Once again, it was probably jays or their dastardly kin the crows (probably too flimsy a shrub for a predatory or scavenging mammal to try climbing--no, not my neighbor, either :( ).

Immediately, though, the cardinals were rebuilding the nest in a Christmas tree-like juniper close to the driveway and my car, about 10 feet from the forsythia. My frequent proximity that first day, though--walking right between my car and the head-high nest a lot while doing yardwork--drove them off before they completed the nest.

They moved to an unpruned privet 5 feet back and set up house there. This place worked, and I guess they had a successful brood. Later in the summer, as in most summers, there are times when I saw five or six or more cardinals feeding together--loosely "together," like all in the same part of the backyard and sorta going around "grazing" after each other from low perch to ground to low perch.

Just received this in my email. Don't know its origin.
The Woman is Abagail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana - she has been studying them daily and one morning put the cup from the feeder, with water in it, in her hand; as they had gotten used to her standing by the feeder they came over to her hand. She says in touching they are as light as a feather. Abagail also said, 'if she had known her husband was taking pictures she would have put on makeup.'

http://cellar.org/cid:000901c895a7$3...01a8c0@BJFrank

Or taken off her dress..