Are Cardinals Rare? No - and the Numbers Are Stranger Than You'd Expect

In 1900, Cardinalis cardinalis bred in just two counties in New York State. Partners in Flight now estimates 130 million of them alive across North America. The question “are cardinals rare?” has a clean answer: no. But the story behind that number is worth staying with.

Not rare - and spreading

Seven U.S. states have named the Northern Cardinal their official state bird: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. That distinction would be politically implausible for a bird that was anything other than ubiquitous. The cardinal is not scarce. It is notable in the sense of being everywhere.

Audubon’s field guide describes the species as “widespread and abundant,” with an estimated population of 130 million birds. The North American Breeding Bird Survey, which Cornell Lab runs across thousands of routes each year, found that cardinal numbers grew by roughly 0.32% per year since 1966. Over the longer window from 1970 to 2014, the population across the U.S. and Canada increased by an estimated 17%. These are not the figures of a species under any kind of pressure.

The range itself keeps moving. Cornell’s Birds of the World database traces the northeastern push back to the mid-1800s. Cardinals were confined largely to the mid-Atlantic in the early 20th century. They reached Massachusetts in 1958, Vermont by 1962, and Maine by 1969. The Maine Bird Atlas records confirmed nesting now extending east to Lubec in Washington County and north to Presque Isle in Aroostook County - territory with no breeding cardinals within living memory. In Minnesota, the species arrived in the late 1800s and reached the Twin Cities by 1930. What was once a southern bird now winters in southeastern Canada.

Why the expansion happened

The drivers, according to Birds of the World, are three: warmer winters, suburban bird feeders, and the conversion of closed-canopy forest into the woodland-edge habitat the cardinal prefers. Cardinals are year-round residents who do not migrate. A milder January in Vermont is not an abstraction for them - it is the difference between surviving and not. Feeders stocked with sunflower seeds extend that margin, and the cardinal’s heavy bill is built exactly for cracking them. Cornell’s research notes that feeders “may have aided its northward spread.” The bird and the suburb have been good for each other.

The species now breeds from southeastern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick south to the Gulf Coast, and west from eastern South Dakota and Kansas through to southeastern Arizona. It inhabits desert washes in the Southwest and city parks in Toronto. Introduced populations have taken hold in Hawaii since 1929-1931, in Los Angeles County, in Bermuda, and on the Swan Islands off Honduras. Rare is not the word.

The Northern Cardinal is one of the best-documented examples of a temperate songbird expanding its range in step with human changes to the landscape - Cornell Lab’s Birds of the World database.

Where the numbers get more specific

The 130 million figure is not evenly distributed. Birds of the World notes that while the overall trend is upward, populations grew most sharply in northern regions over the 1970-2014 period and “decreased most in the southeastern United States” - the historic core of the range. Regional breeding bird atlas projects give a sense of scale: Ohio’s 2007-2011 atlas estimated roughly 2.1 million singing males in that state alone. Pennsylvania’s 2004-2009 atlas put its male population at 1.4 million. Ontario, at the northern edge of the range, holds around 500,000 individuals. The species page carries the full account of habitat and distribution.

The oldest documented wild female reached at least 15 years and nine months, and annual adult survival rates in Ohio ranged from 50% to 78% depending on site. These are not the demographics of a fragile species.

Why people still ask

Part of the answer is the white cardinal. A genetic mutation affecting carotenoid processing produces birds that appear white, cream, or yellow rather than red. Audubon puts the yellow variant at roughly one in a million birds. When someone photographs one at a feeder and the image circulates, the assumption often follows that all cardinals are uncommon. They are not. The variant is rare. The species is not.

Part of the answer is also the male’s color. A bird this intensely red - at a feeder, against February snow - does not read as common to the human eye. It reads as exceptional. The female, warm brown with red-washed wings and crest, is equally present and equally numerous. She is simply seen less often, which tilts the perception. Questions about conservation and endangered status get asked for the same reason: the bird looks like it should be protected. The IUCN Red List says Least Concern. Cornell’s data says no management is needed.

What that abundance actually means

The male cardinal cracking seeds at a winter feeder is not a rare event requiring documentation. He appears in eBird checklists submitted from his core range in numbers that make him one of the most-reported birds in North America. He has likely been at that feeder before you got there.

Abundance of this kind has its own texture. Cardinals are year-round residents who hold territory across all seasons. A pair that nests in your yard in April may be feeding at the same station in December. The individual bird you are watching is traceable - it is probably the same bird, season after season, or its offspring. The 130 million figure is the sum of many very specific birds at very specific places, running on sunflower seeds and the slow expansion of the suburb.

For what a group of these birds is called, there is a word worth knowing. It fits the species better than most collective nouns do.

Rare species demand planning. The Northern Cardinal demands a window and a feeder. The distance between those two categories is worth keeping clear.