You know, there’s a peculiar kind of silence that falls over the world just before dawn. It’s not the absence of sound—it’s more like the universe holding its breath, waiting for something. That’s when I like to sing. When my voice might be the only one splitting the air for miles around. Some mornings I wonder if I’m actually creating the day by announcing it. Kierkegaard talked about existence preceding essence, but I think he missed something fundamental—sometimes essence calls existence into being.
I’m what you humans call a Northern Cardinal. Cardinalis cardinalis, if you want to get technical about it, though I’ve never understood why you need to say things twice to make them official. I’m that flash of red you glimpse through your kitchen window in winter, that dash of crimson against the snow that makes you pause mid-sip of your morning coffee. That’s me—the one that makes you remember beauty exists even in January.
My mate doesn’t share my particular shade of scarlet. She wears a more subtle palette—warm browns and touches of red that catch the light just so. You humans seem to fixate on differences like these. Male and female, red and brown, bright and subdued. But here’s something I’ve observed from your backyard bird feeders: those categories you’re so fond of creating? They’re just convenient fictions. The truth is always messier, always more interesting.
When I defend my territory—which spans from the old maple at the edge of your yard to the row of evergreens along the fence—I’m not just protecting space. I’m guarding possibility. Each inch of my domain contains potential nests, food sources, perches where I might sing in the morning light. Sometimes I’ll spend hours fighting my reflection in your car mirror. I know it’s not another cardinal, not really, but something about that red flash triggers something primal in me. I suppose we all have our windmills to tilt at.
The humans who study my kind say we mate for a breeding season, maybe several if things work out. They make it sound so transactional. What they don’t tell you is how I bring my mate choice seeds during courtship, carefully selected and husked. How we build our nest together—she does most of the construction, true, but I bring materials, stay close, keep watch. We’re creating something together that neither of us could make alone. Isn’t that what any relationship worth having is about?
Our nest is a miracle of engineering—starting with coarse twigs bent into a cup, then layered with leaves, grapevine bark, and finally lined with fine grasses and pine needles. Four distinct layers, each with its purpose. It takes us up to nine days to complete. You humans with your power tools and prefabricated materials have forgotten something essential about creation—that sometimes the meaning is in the making.
My mate lays three eggs, sometimes four. Speckled blue-green things that contain all the possibilities of continuation. She sits on them for twelve days while I bring her food. When the chicks hatch, they’re helpless—just hungry mouths and translucent skin. For the next two months, we’re consumed with feeding them insects, teaching them to fly, showing them which berries are safe to eat. Then they’re gone, joining flocks of other juveniles, and the woods suddenly seem too quiet.
I eat mostly seeds—up to 90% of my diet. Sunflower seeds, safflower, the seeds of grasses and weeds. In summer, I supplement with insects. I’ve developed a taste for your black oil sunflower seeds —there’s a richness there, an oiliness that satisfies something deep in my nature. You think you’re observing me when I visit your feeder, but I’m studying you too, watching your patterns through the window. The ways you move through your indoor territories, the rituals you perform with your strange devices.
The red of my feathers comes from what I eat—carotenoid pigments from fruits and berries transform into this crimson brilliance during molting. My body literally becomes what I consume. There’s a lesson there about transformation, about how we incorporate our experiences into our very being. The philosopher Feuerbach said “Man is what he eats.” I’m living proof of that particular truth.
In winter, when food grows scarce, we cardinals gather in loose flocks. The territorial boundaries that seemed so vital in spring suddenly matter less than survival. We share information about food sources through our movements, our calls. There’s wisdom in knowing when to stand your ground and when to join the community. Thoreau went to Walden to live deliberately, but even he came back to town eventually.
You humans seem perpetually caught between your desire for independence and your need for connection. I watch you in your houses—separate yet clustered, each with your artificial nests, your carefully maintained boundaries. You create technology to bridge distances while building higher fences. From my perch in your maple tree, it all seems unnecessarily complicated.
I’ve been known to sing in the midst of snowstorms, when most other birds are silent. There’s something about raising your voice against the seeming finality of winter that feels necessary. Like pushing back against the void. My song consists of clear, loud whistles—what your field guides describe as “what-cheer, what-cheer, what-cheer” or sometimes “purty-purty-purty.” As if my complex vocalizations could be reduced to human syllables. But I understand the impulse to translate the unknown into something familiar.
My mate sings too, you know. That surprises some of you bird-watchers, since female songbirds often stay silent. She sings from the nest, sometimes, and I’ve wondered if it’s a form of instruction for our nestlings—their first music lesson. Or perhaps it’s simply joy, or contemplation, or something human language doesn’t have a word for yet.
We cardinals don’t migrate. When other birds flee south in autumn, we stay put. We’ve adapted to your human-altered landscapes, finding opportunities where others see only scarcity. There’s a certain stubbornness in that choice, a refusal to surrender to the apparent limitations of season and geography. The Stoics talked about accepting what you cannot change, but they never said anything about not adapting to it.
I’ll live three years, if I’m lucky. Some of my kind have made it to fifteen, but that’s rare. In my time, I’ll raise several broods, defend countless territories, sing thousands of songs. It’s a small life by your human standards, I suppose. But consider this: my heartbeat is about 500 times per minute. I experience time differently than you do. What feels like a brief moment to you might contain worlds of sensation for me.
As the light fades, I find my roosting spot in dense evergreen cover—protection from both the cold and predators. Before sleep, I often watch the strange blue glow from your windows, you humans gathered around your screens. You’re so absorbed in worlds far away that you miss the cardinal singing his evening vespers just outside. That’s the paradox you live within—connected to everything except what’s right in front of you.
Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll sing again. Not because I must, but because that’s what cardinals do. We announce ourselves to the waiting day. We claim our small piece of existence with voice and color. We remind you, if you’re paying attention, that beauty doesn’t require justification or explanation. It simply is—like the cardinal’s flash of red against the snow, a momentary perfection in an imperfect world.