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A Black cardinal? (1 Viewer)

MNbirdwatcher

New member
United States
We live in southern Minnesota and like to feed the birds who are willing to stay around during the winter. It was very cold today (12/21/24), starting below zero and only getting up to the teens above, with a few inches of snow on the ground. The feeders were packed out. There was the usual assortment of finches, chickadees, a couple of nuthatches, dozens of juncos, downy and hairy woodpeckers, and a pair of cardinals. Then I spotted a very unusual bird eating from a ground platform--it looked like a black cardinal. Definitely the size and profile of a cardinal, with a slightly longer crest and a black beak. The feathers were all black, but there were dark reddish-black feathers on the tips of the wings and the tail. When I mentioned it to my partner, he brushed it off but he saw it too a few hours later. It closely resembled the Phainopepla in the Cornell lab ID page, but its range is nowhere near Minnesota, but about a thousand miles south of here. Wish I could have gotten a photo!

 

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