What can I say? We're a "geeky" family! We have a family book club and we take our bird book on vacation with us (when we remember). This past week with the whole family here, we were talking about the bald cardinal that we have. The head is blue---we didn't know that cardinals were blue under their red feathers. Butch said he saw it last year or the year before which lead to a discussion about how long birds live. We don't really know the answer to that, but then this morning, I remembered the bird Jordan swore she saw when she was only 4. I told her that it didn't count unless someone else saw it and could verify it. She drew the picture below so we could be on the look out for it. After over 10 years, she's been vindicated!! I guess birds can live for more than 10 years---or we have a family cardinals that have a terrible genetic defect. Why not---people inherit baldness? I guess it just really "sucks" for a bird.
We have a couple of cardinals that are bald too because they lost their feathers due to mites (I found out from Janet) but I haven't notice that their heads are blue. They really look abnormal & ugly though.
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