The bald cardinal still stops by the feeder in the evening. He’s now losing the smaller red feathers around his eye and above his beak. The black feathers bordering his beak seem unaffected, although it’s hard to tell through the window glass blur.
This image is a tight crop from the Sony DSC-H5, which has a lens about two stops faster than my Canon SX230HS pocket camera and is much better suited for evening photography. I’ll add the tele adapter to the stack and try to get a better picture from the door; I think the autofocus assist light spooks the poor bird.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
4 responses to “Bald Cardinal: Continuing Feather Loss”
I thought this was interesting…. sounds similar to what you are seeing.
http://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/scott-shalaway/solving-the-mystery-of-what-causes-bald-cardinals/15565.html
There’s another picture in the queue where I describe the poor critter as a small vulture, so … everybody thinks that’s a good description!
I wonder why this doesn’t seem to affect other birds? You’d expect at least a mention of it along with all the cardinal references.
And this is interesting, too. Note the date!
Click to access p0195-p0195.pdf
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