birdsoup

Recently, I came across an interesting factoid – a N. Cardinal may have 80 offspring in its lifetime.

Cardinals produce 3-4 eggs per clutch, 2-3 clutches per year. An individual cardinal can live over 10-12 years.

If you do the math, a cardinal family reunion after only, say, 3 years, including kids, grandkids and great-grandkids would be an enormous gathering number a couple of hundred cardinals. That could be a sight.

Unfortunately, most young birds do not survive their first year of life. That is the only reason we are not swamped by cardinals.