What Does a Female Cardinal Look Like? Identification Tips

Female cardinal identification at a glance

The female northern cardinal is the same size and shape as the male: a mid-sized songbird about 21–23.5 cm (8.3–9.3 in) long, with a long tail, a tall pointed crest and a short, heavy, cone-shaped bill. Only the colors differ.

The best field marks are the combination of a crest, a thick red-orange bill and reddish wing and tail edges. In good light, the female’s breast can look warm golden-tan, and her red highlights stand out clearly when she flies.

Plumage details

Up close, the female’s head, breast and belly are warm tan or buff, while the back is grayer olive-brown. The crest is brown tipped with red and can be raised high when she is alert or lowered flat when she is relaxed. The face has a mask of gray to dark gray feathers around the bill and eyes, less sharply defined than the male’s black mask.

The wings show red edges on the flight feathers, and the tail is washed with dull red. Individual females vary: some are warm and rich in color, others paler and grayer, partly because of diet and partly because of age and health. Like males, females take their red tones from carotenoid pigments in their food, as explained in why are cardinals red?

How to tell a female from a juvenile

Young cardinals in their first summer look very much like adult females, which causes much confusion at feeders. The key difference is the bill:

• Adult female: bright coral or red-orange bill.
• Juvenile: dark gray to blackish bill that gradually turns orange during the first fall.

Juveniles are also plainer and browner overall, with less red in the wings and a shorter, often scruffy crest. Fledglings just out of the nest may have a stubby tail and bits of fluffy down. By late fall, after their first molt, young females look like adults, and young males become patchy red and brown before turning fully red.

Do female cardinals sing?

Yes, and this is one of the most interesting facts about them. In many North American songbirds, only males sing, but female northern cardinals sing complex songs that can be as varied as the male’s. They often sing from the nest, and studies suggest these songs may tell the male when to bring food or carry other information about the nest.

Pairs sometimes perform counter-singing, in which the male and female answer each other with matching phrases. Females also give the same sharp metallic “chip” alarm call as males.

Female cardinal behavior and nesting

The female does nearly all of the nest building, weaving twigs, bark strips, leaves and grasses into a cup in a dense shrub, vine tangle or small tree, usually 1–3 m (3–10 ft) above the ground. She lays 3–4 eggs, sometimes 1–5, and incubates them alone for 12–13 days while the male brings her food.

During courtship, the male feeds the female seeds beak to beak. This behavior, which looks like a kiss, often continues during nesting. When the chicks leave the nest after about 9–11 days, the male often takes over feeding them while the female starts another nest. Pairs commonly raise two broods in a year and sometimes more.

Birds that look like a female cardinal

Several birds can be confused with a female cardinal, especially at a glance:

• Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus): a close relative found in the deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico. It is grayer overall with red highlights and a stubby, curved yellow bill instead of red-orange.
• Cedar waxwing: also crested and brown, with a black mask, but sleeker, with a thin black bill, a yellow-tipped tail and often red waxy tips on the wings.
• Tufted titmouse: a small gray bird with a crest, but much smaller, with a tiny black bill and pale underparts.
• Female house finch: brown and heavily streaked, without a crest.
• Female summer or scarlet tanager: yellowish-olive, without a crest, and with a paler, thinner bill.

If the bird has a crest and a thick red-orange bill, it is almost certainly a female cardinal.

Rare and unusual female cardinals

Occasionally, birdwatchers spot a cardinal that is half red and half brown, divided neatly down the middle. These rare birds are bilateral gynandromorphs, with male tissue on one side of the body and female tissue on the other. A few have been photographed at feeders in recent years.

Rare yellow cardinals also occur in both sexes. They have a genetic variation that prevents them from turning yellow pigments into red. For more North American backyard species to compare with, see our guide to backyard birds of North Carolina.