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 & 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.