Red-crested Cardinal

• GeneralHeavily taken as a cage bird for its scarlet crest and its song.
• It is one of the traditional cage birds of the Southern Cone, and that demand sustains a considerable illegal trade: seizure operations in Argentina and Brazil recover hundreds of birds every year.
• There are established feral populations in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, descended from escapes and releases from the bird trade.
• Juveniles have a brown head instead of a red one and take almost a year to acquire the adult red, so flocks contain birds that look very different from one another.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Gallery forest, riverside scrub, wooded savannah and parks of central South America

Birth weight

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Size at birth

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Sexual maturity

12 months

Gestation / incubation

13 days of incubation

Litter / clutch size

3 eggs

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroaria_coronata

Best time: All year round in the Chaco, the Argentine littoral and Uruguay, by day, in riverside woods and scrub edges near water.

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.