[NDizzle]

There were two giant northern cardinals "playing" (who knows) in my front yard yesterday morning. This was right after the snow started melting, so their bright red coloring really stood out.

Maybe it's me getting old, but it's nice to see things like that every now and then.

[Fellshard]

Having grown up in an area without cardinals, I'm delighted to now live somewhere that has a few of them about in winter. There's a mated pair that keep pretty close together around our house, and they're a delight to watch together.

[pottertheotter]

I grew up in Silicon Valley and had never seen a cardinal in the wild until a couple years ago. Currently in the Midwest and see them in my yard and I love them. My home office has a bay window and there is a bush that backs up to part of it, so I can look into the bush. The cardinals love to go in it and I can watch them from my desk. It really is a delight.

I also love goldfinches. I had a bird feeder that only they can eat from and had so much fun watching them. Plus it made it so I can instantly recognize their calls.

And the tufted titmouse is the cutest regular I see.

[mprovost]

I always assumed that they lived in Silicon Valley because the sports teams from Stanford are called "Cardinal". But I just looked it up and they're named after the colour, not the bird.

[Cthulhu_]

Having some activity in your back yard is definitely worth it, and there's so many people that don't have that because they (have to) live somewhere that's densely urbanized.

I had a very bland back yard (green ivies as walls, some other evergreen ground covering), but my girlfriend moved in two years ago and she's a gardener. We've got a diversity of plants now, the soil is alive again, and there's a popular bird feeder, regularly refilled, hanging on the shed now. We sometimes get a dozen birds flitting about there, who then get interrupted by a pair of magpies.

But, this whole neighbourhood I live in (very middle class, I'm at the outer edge) has been designed to allow for nature, with lots of semi-wild green spaces dotted around and lots of waterways.

[CryptoPunk]

We truly are blessed to live in a world with such wonders.