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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gthang" data-source="post: 175511" data-attributes="member: 6816">hmm, interesting.The last time I saw a Northern Cardinal, about a couple of weeks ago, it was bright red, as if it were trying to find the nearest bathroom (lol!). Seriously, the bird in the first picture is indeed a Northern Cardinal, although I'm not really sure about the lack of a black mask. One possibility: That England doesn't have the particular food that "creates" the mask. The UK and US have very different climates (or so I'm told), and this creates the problem of lack of the bird's native diet on the accidental lands. Surely both of our countries have these foods in record numbers, but one country could have a vastly lower number of berries-to-insects ratio than the other. This same country (with the lower berry::bug ratio) could have a higher fruits-to-insects ratio than the other country (with the higher berry::bug ratio). differences like these could account for the difference in the plumage (even more so in the mask!)</blockquote>