Cardinals are familiar backyard birds with striking red plumage. If you’ve seen them poking around your lawn or garden, you may have wondered – do cardinals eat worms? As it turns out, worms do make up part of many cardinal diets.
In this detailed guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about what cardinals like to eat.
An Overview of Cardinal Diets
Cardinals are Omnivores
Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) are omnivorous songbirds that consume both plant and animal matter. As opportunistic feeders, they adapt their diets based on the seasonal availability of various food sources.
Cardinals will eat insects and arachnids, seeds and grain, fruit and berries, and occasionally small vertebrates like frogs and lizards.
Worms as a Food Source
Earthworms and other invertebrates make up a decent portion of many adult cardinal diets. A 2022 study by Penn State found that cardinals seem to prefer worms and insects high in protein and fat. During breeding season, cardinals rely heavily on caterpillars and other insects to feed their chicks the nutrition they need to grow.
Worms likely become a more regular part of cardinal meals in spring and summer when they are abundant near the soil surface.
Favorite Cardinal Foods
While cardinals eat worms, they have other favorite foods as well. Here is what tops the list for many cardinals:
- Seeds and grains – Black oil sunflower seeds are a huge draw at bird feeders. Cardinals also enjoy millet, cracked corn, safflower seeds, peanuts, and Nyjer thistle.
- Fruits – Cardinals relish berries and fruits like dogwood, elderberry, wild grape, black cherry, black raspberry, pomegranate, and citrus.
- Insects – Great protein sources like beetles, crickets, caterpillars, ants, and grasshoppers.
By offering a mix of seeds, fruits, and live mealworms or grubs, you can attract more northern cardinals to your backyard feeders.
How Cardinals Hunt and Catch Prey
Ground Foraging Behaviors
Cardinals are primarily ground foragers and use a variety of techniques to find food on the ground. They often hop along the ground, pausing frequently to look for movement that might indicate prey. Cardinals have excellent vision and regularly scan the ground and vegetation to detect prey animals.
Some typical foraging behaviors include:
- Scraping away debris – Cardinals use their beaks to flip over leaves, peel back bark, and dig through dirt and mulch to uncover insects and spiders.
- Probing into vegetation – They probe their beaks into thickets, bushes, and grass clumps to poke around for hiding insects and arthropods.
- Gleaning along branches – Cardinals sometimes hop along low branches picking off insects and spiders from leaves and bark.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, over 60% of a cardinal’s diet consists of invertebrates like beetles, ants, caterpillars, and spiders. By foraging on the ground, cardinals access a rich bounty of protein-packed prey.
Ground foraging helps cardinals find food year-round but is especially crucial in winter when other food sources are scarce.
Using Their Beaks to Probe and Pick Up Food
A cardinal’s cone-shaped bill is a versatile foraging tool. Here are some of the ways cardinals use their beaks when feeding on the ground:
- Pecking – Cardinals hammer their beaks into the ground to dig up seeds, worms, and insects.
- Probing – They probe their beaks into cracks and crevices in search of hiding insects.
- Prying – Cardinals pry open twigs, bark, pine cones, and other substrates to find concealed arthropods.
- Grasping – Their beaks allow them to pick up and grasp onto larger prey like beetles, caterpillars, and spiders.
- Hulling – Cardinals use their beaks to hull and crack open seeds and nuts.
The beak is such an asset for foraging that researchers found the shape of a cardinal’s bill correlates to its foraging habits and diet composition (Greenberg and Droege, 2002). Cardinals with stouter, thicker beaks consume more seeds and have access to a wider variety of seeds.
Cardinals with more slender bills eat more insects and a higher proportion of caterpillars. So the cardinal’s bill is a versatile tool that allows it to utilize many different food sources!
What Types of Worms Cardinals Consume
Earthworms
Earthworms are a staple food source for cardinals. Their soft bodies are easy for cardinals to swallow, making them an ideal meal. Earthworms live in the top layers of soil and leaf litter, which is easy for cardinals to probe and pick through.
An earthworm can make up over 60% of a cardinal’s animal-based diet.
Cardinals especially like to feed on earthworms in the early morning and after rain showers when the worms come up to the surface. The birds will tug worms out of the ground or pick them off sidewalks and lawns.
A 2014 study found that cardinals in urban areas consumed more earthworms than rural cardinals, likely because of the abundance of lawns and disturbed soil in cities.
Mealworms
Mealworms are the larval form of the darkling beetle. They are a nutritious live food for captive cardinals, providing protein, fat, and essential amino acids. However, wild cardinals don’t typically consume mealworms since the larvae live their lives inside grain kernels, away from the bird’s reach.
That said, cardinals may opportunistically eat beetle larvae if they come across them while foraging. A 2005 study in Missouri found that ground beetle larvae made up a small percentage of the cardinal nestling diet during the breeding season.
So while not a primary food source, cardinals won’t pass up a chance for an easy high-protein snack!
Wax Worms
Wax worms are the caterpillar larvae of wax moths. They live inside beehives and feed on wax, pollen, and shed skins from bee larvae. Cardinals are unlikely to consume wax worms in the wild since the larvae remain hidden within the deep recesses of the hive.
However, captive cardinals fed a diet of wax worms experienced faster growth compared to those fed mealworms, according to a 2012 study. This is likely because wax worms have higher levels of certain fatty acids.
So while not part of their natural diet, wax worms can provide important nutrients to captive cardinals.
Best Practices: Feeding Cardinals Worms
Setting Up a Bird Feeding Station
To attract beautiful red cardinals to your backyard, set up a bird feeding station with a tray or platform feeder. Locate it near trees or bushes where the birds can quickly escape from predators. Choose a spot where you can observe the feathered visitors from inside your home.
Fill the feeders with nutritious foods cardinals crave, like black oil sunflower seeds, dried mealworms, fruit, and suet.
The Audubon Society recommends installing feeding stations at least 10 feet from windows so birds don’t accidentally fly into the glass. Place multiple feeders 10-15 feet apart to reduce squabbles between aggressive birds.
Clean feeders regularly with a 10% bleach solution to prevent the spread of diseases. Offer fresh water in a bird bath or waterer placed on the ground.
Offering Live Mealworms
Cardinals relish live mealworms as a tasty, protein-packed snack. Purchase live mealworms from a pet store or online supplier and store them in your refrigerator until you’re ready to serve them. Place a few dozen mealworms into an open tray feeder in the early morning when cardinals start foraging.
Serve them fresh outside – don’t let them die and get rotten!
You’ll be delighted when a bright red cardinal cock or tan female swoops onto your feeder to gobble up the wriggly worms! Live insects are especially beneficial for feeding cardinal chicks – the worm fat and protein helps developing birds thrive.
Putting Out Dried Worm Treats
Dried mealworms are another excellent high-protein food to offer cardinals. Keep a jar of dried worms handy to sprinkle a few onto your feeder tray any time. You can also offer freeze-dried bloodworms, which many songbirds find irresistible.
Special bird treats, like Kaytee Exact Rainbow Worms, contain brightly colored dried worms blended with grains, fruit, nuts, and vegetables. Cardinals may initially be wary of these unnaturally neon snacks but will sample them when other birds drop in to eat.
Over time, cardinals will become hooked on the tasty flavors!
| Food Item | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Live mealworms | Freshly harvested, soft, high moisture content |
| Dried mealworms | Long shelf life, high protein |
| Freeze dried bloodworms | Bright color attracts birds, high nutrition |
Worms make up about 15% of a cardinal’s diet in the wild according to Audubon. Offer live or dried worms to supplement seeds, fruit, and insects available in your backyard habitat. Feed them worms year-round, but especially during spring nesting season when parent cardinals work overtime to find food for their chicks.
Frequently Asked Questions About Cardinals and Worms
Do Cardinals Only Eat Live Worms?
Cardinals are opportunistic feeders and will eat both live and dead worms. However, they do prefer live worms and grubs because of the movement. Cardinals have excellent eyesight and are attracted to the wriggling motion of live worms.
While live worms make up a good portion of a cardinal’s diet, especially in spring and summer, they will also eat dead or dormant worms when other food sources are scarce. This is especially true in winter when insects and other prey are not as active.
What Do Baby Cardinals Eat?
Baby cardinals rely almost entirely on worms, grubs, and insects to fuel their rapid growth and development. According to the Audubon Society, the diet of nestling cardinals consists of about 70% animal protein from worms and insects.
Adult cardinals will seek out protein-rich worms, grubs, beetles, flies, ants, spiders, and caterpillars to bring back to their chicks. As the nestlings mature, they’ll also start trying berries, seeds, and other fruits provided by their parents as they transition to an adult diet.
Do Cardinals Eat Worms from Compost Piles?
Cardinals frequently visit compost piles and bins in search of grubs, worms, beetles, and other insects that live and feed in the decaying organic matter. A University of Illinois study found cardinals spent 18% of their feeding time searching through leaf litter and compost piles.
Compost piles provide an excellent habitat for worms, grubs, beetles, ants and flies that cardinals prey upon. Always be sure to enrich compost piles with plenty of nitrogen-rich green materials to fuel insect and worm growth.
Leaving some leaf litter near the pile will also attract foraging cardinals.
| Best Worms for Cardinals | Where They Live |
| Earthworms | Soil, compost piles |
| Red worms | Compost piles, manure |
| Green worms | Flower beds, gardens |
Conclusion
As we’ve covered, cardinals do supplement their diets with various types of worms. Offering live mealworms or dried worms can attract these beautiful birds to your backyard. Understanding what cardinals like to eat helps you support local wildlife.
We hope this guide gave you the worm-related details you were seeking about cardinal feeding habits!
