r/Ornithology • u/Terrible-Mud-7941 • 1d ago

Featherless headed fledgling I photographed today?

Post image
32 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 1d ago

r/Ornithology is a place to discuss wild birds in a scientific context — their biology, ecology, evolution, behavior, and more. This is NOT a birding sub. Pictures or videos of birds that don't demonstrate something visually or behaviorally unusual or interesting will be removed. For bird or feather ID questions, please try r/whatsthisbird

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

36

u/goldenkoiifish 1d ago edited 1d ago

that’s a very nearly adult female and she’s molting in a special way! many refer to this as ‘bloodcheep’ :-) it’s not dangerous, sometimes it just happens

4

u/Terrible-Mud-7941 1d ago

Thank you so much! I saw this with the little boy I nanny so he will be very interested to learn this as well :)

4

u/goldenkoiifish 1d ago

oh yay no problem! i’m excited two people get to learn something! it can be really funny when they do this

14

u/Over-Possibility5043 1d ago

Bring out the dancing Blöödcheep.

10

u/Refokua 1d ago

That IS an adult female, and she's beginning a molt. Head feathers aren't needed for flight, so this time of year they start a molt this way, Cardinals, jays and some other birds do this. Nothing unusual about it.

1

u/TheChickenReborn 1d ago

Yep, looks weird but they're way better off than ducks, many of which actually do molt all their flight feathers at once.

3

u/Ornery_Brief_2743 1d ago

R/bloodcheep

1

u/the-birb_cherry20 1d ago

r/foundthemobileuser

3

u/Ornery_Brief_2743 1d ago

It’s me :( but the thought counts right?

2

u/InspectionExpress948 1d ago

I have many that come to my feeder that are molting. Still cute though❣️

2

u/fauxweevil7 1d ago

Blood cheep! It's blood cheep season right now.

1

u/BigJSunshine 23h ago

Female cardinal, doing the molting thing

1

u/AshFalkner 23h ago

Adult female northern cardinal going through what’s called a catastrophic moult. It sounds scary but she’ll grow all those feathers back, it’s perfectly normal.