The Cardinal Feeding Preferences

Cardinals love to stay in places that offer them a good supply of food. This is the reason why they are frequent backyard visitors especially to homes that have bird houses and feeders. Cardinals eat different kinds of food including insects, seeds, grains and fruits. The pokeberry, poison ivy fruit, elm buds, box elder seeds, ragweed seeds, sunflower seeds, muskmelon seeds and corn are just some of their favorite food. Thirty percent of their diet consists of insects making the cardinals very useful to farmers and gardeners. Their insect diet consists of pests such as moths, beetles, ants, dragonflies, cotton cutworms, scale insects, cotton bollworms, grasshoppers, aphids, snails and slugs.

During the winter season, cardinals are a frequent sight in backyard feeders in search of food along with sparrows, finches, towhees and other seed-eating birds. Cardinals usually eat on the ground by hopping around but they can go to bird tables, trays on posts and trees, window trays and hanging feeders especially those with perches.

Water is vital for cardinals. They use it for drinking and bathing during the hot and cold months. You must have seen that they love to visit birdbaths with fresh and unfrozen water. When they can’t find a birdbath, cardinals will look for shallow edges of ponds and streams. They also love to bath beside lawn water sprinklers.