That missing leg surely involves an accident, those missing feathers may be mites, but now we have a male Northern Cardinal with what looks like a tumor on his head:
It’s not obvious in that picture, but the black patch seems to be the rubbed-raw top of a growth.
Prior to these birds, in all the years we’ve been birdwatching we’ve never seen any damaged cardinals…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
2 responses to “Northern Cardinal With Tumor”
I think we should build a DIY chromatography or something to find what poisons we are ingesting. Just to illustrate, small illiterate farmers simply dip their veggies into insecticide to get rid of pests just before market sale.
Rinsing them afterward in whatever water might come to hand; that drainage ditch doesn’t have too much sewage this early in the day.
We techies assume everybody reads the labels and acts accordingly, but (as you point out) that’s entirely invalid. Heck, even folks who can read often don’t bother.