Northern Cardinal
I took this photograph of a male Northern Cardinal at Starved Rock State Park, near Utica, Illinois in early May, 2009. He is in an interesting position, for some reason his left foot is up in the air! These are pretty, and very common, birds here in Illinois. When I lived in New Mexico I was surprised that they had no Cardinals – their range is only in the far south-west, IE “Boot heel” of the state – although they are common in Arizona. I saw a pair of Cardinals at the Gila Lower Box in south-western New Mexico once and was so surprised that I had to look it up in the bird book to make sure that it wasn’t some new and exotic species! Speaking of the Lower Box, that is a great place to go birding – it straddles two different ecosystems and has some 280 different species. I was also quite surprised once at seeing a Great Blue Heron in the Gila River there – it seemed so strange and incongruous to see a water bird in the middle of the desert, river or no river!
