In 1903, the great Hoosier naturalist and writer Gene Stratton-Porter published her first book, “The Song of the Cardinal.” At first an article for “Century Magazine,” the story was also a tribute to the memory of her father, an early call for conservation, a natural history of the Limberlost swamps she loved so much, and a celebration of the lives of the birds we have come to believe will always be with us.
“It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard,” Stratton-Porter wrote of her heroic central character, a striking male cardinal, like those she often saw near her home in Adams County.
Although they are in Indiana year-round, to this writer, Northern cardinals seem to take center stage at the onset of winter. There’s an ebb and flow to that season, at once snow white and crisp blue, at another watery gray and muddy brown, but one consistency seems to be the flashes of cardinal red we see decorating our trees like Christmas lights left burning well past the holidays.
Few birds command our attention like cardinals. Of course, the males are always dapper, their bright, noticeable feathers not unlike the uniforms of British “redcoats.” Yet, the less colorful females do more of the heavy lifting in the relationship. Females ensure the species’ survival by choosing the time and place to build nests — sometimes as many as four a year — and they solely and dutifully incubate the couple’s eggs, too. It is also interesting to note that female cardinals are singers, something that can’t be said for nearly all other songbird species.
To be fair, it is common to see the males feeding females on the nest, and they’re quite protective, too, some even attacking their own images reflected in windows in the certainty that they have rivals. It is not inaccurate to say that cardinal couples do “mate for life,” although that means they typically remain together for at least a year or until one of them dies.
Cardinals are homebodies; they don’t migrate, although they do tend to enjoy communal living and will move in small clans to locations where water and food are readily available.
There also seems to be an immortal quality to cardinals. As I wrote in a story years ago, the Cherokee people believed the birds were a symbol for the creation of the world, while many contemporaries take comfort in the idea that a visit from a cardinal serves as a message from a lost loved one.
Despite the cardinals in Stratton-Porter’s book taking on human qualities, the voice of Abram, the farmer inspired by the writer’s father, seems to best echo our own thoughts about these wondrous birds.
As he chastises a young hunter, one intent on killing the cardinal for its beautiful feathers, he says, “God never made anything prettier ‘an that bird, an’ He must a-been mighty proud o’ the job.”
Mike Lunsford is a freelance columnist, feature writer, and photographer, primarily for the Terre Haute Tribune-Star and Terre Haute Living magazine. The author of seven books lives in Parke County with his wife, Joanie. Contact Lunsford at hickory913@gmail.com.
