Cardinals are striking red songbirds that brighten up backyards across North America. But have you ever wondered where these colorful creatures spend their nights when darkness falls? As diurnal birds that are active mostly during the day, discovering the secret sleeping habits of cardinals can provide insight into their night time behavior.
If you’re short on time, here’s a quick answer to your question: Cardinals typically sleep in dense bushes, evergreens, or vine-tangled branches at night to stay safe from predators and sheltered from the elements.
Choosing Sheltered Sleeping Spots
Thick Bushes and Shrubs
Cardinals often roost in dense, thick bushes and shrubs at night to stay protected from predators and sheltered from wind or rain. Evergreen shrubs like hollies, boxwoods, and yews offer year-round cover with their dense foliage.
Deciduous shrubs like lilacs, forsythias, and hydrangeas also provide good shelter when in leaf. Cardinals prefer nesting in shrubs close to a food source. Backyard shrubs near bird feeders are prime real estate.
Studies show over 60% of observed cardinals slept in bushes or shrubs at night (Senechal et al. 2003).
Evergreen Trees
Evergreen trees like spruces, firs, cedars, and pines provide great shelter for cardinals at night with their year-round canopy of needles. The dense branches protect the birds from wind, rain, and snow. Most evergreens also have vegetation lower down, giving hiding spots from predators.
Cardinals often gather in communal winter roosts of 20-50 birds in evergreen trees for extra warmth and protection (Cornell Lab). Evergreen roost sites are reused year after year.
Vine-Covered Trees and Branches
Trees enveloped with vines like trumpet creepers, Virginia creepers, grape vines, or honeysuckle vines make perfect cardinal sleeping sites. The tangle of vines forms a protected, padded hammock. It shelters the birds from wet weather and conceals them from predators like hawks or cats.
Clusters of dead vines also offer nooks and cavities for roosting. One study in an Ohio park found 37% of radio-tagged cardinals slept in grape arbors or vine-laden trees (Senechal et al. 2003).
Cardinals also commonly sleep on horizontal branches covered with vines, brush, and debris. The shelter helps retain heat and provides cover overhead and on the sides. Cavities in stumps or trees offer another protected site.
Offer vines, brush piles, roost boxes, and evergreens in your backyard to invite cardinals to sleep safely at night.
Solitary Sleepers
Cardinals are known for being quite independent birds that don’t form large flocks like some other bird species. They tend to be solitary sleepers, roosting alone at night rather than in groups. Here’s some more information on where cardinals like to sleep and rest their wings when darkness falls:
Cardinals prefer to sleep in dense vegetation that provides cover and concealment. Thick hedges, dense shrubs, and treetops are prime real estate for these vivid red birds. Sleeping in foliage helps protect cardinals from predators like owls, hawks, and cats that hunt by night and rely on keen eyesight to find prey.
The thicker the vegetation, the more camouflaged and protected the cardinal will be as it snoozes. Evergreens like pines, spruces, and cedars are also popular sleeping spots.
In addition to sleeping in shrubs and trees, cardinals may roost in nests they built during breeding season. An abandoned nest provides familiarity and a bit of added warmth on chilly nights. Sometimes several cardinals may crowd together in a nest for safety in numbers, but usually just one will occupy a nest overnight.
Roost height depends on the surrounding habitat. In dense woods, cardinals may sleep as high as 30 feet up in a conifer. Near residential areas, they often sleep lower, in hedges and shrubs 5-10 feet off the ground. Elevated roosts help shield them from terrestrial predators.
Cardinals do not use birdhouses for sleeping. While they may visit bird feeders in backyards during the day, at night they prefer natural vegetation that provides cover. Backyard birdhouses are more likely to be used by species like chickadees, titmice, wrens and bluebirds.
In winter, cardinals fluff out their feathers for maximum insulation while roosting. This helps them retain body heat and survive freezing temperatures. They may also sleep nearer to heat sources like vents and chimneys from buildings.
Access to a reliable, high-calorie food source like backyard bird feeders also boosts their winter survival odds.
While cardinals typically prefer sleeping alone, during migration they may congregate in larger groups at prime stopover spots. Here they find safety in numbers as they rest and refuel. But once they reach their breeding or wintering grounds, it’s back to their solitary sleeping habits.
So the next time you hear a cardinal’s sweet whistling song in your yard, remember that come nightfall, it will retreat to a secluded spot in dense foliage or an abandoned nest. There it will softly snooze by itself, hidden away from predators’ eyes until the morning light returns to stir it awake.
Defending Against Predators
Camouflage
Cardinals have bright red plumage which makes them easy to spot. However, this coloring helps them blend into their environment and avoid predators in a couple of key ways. The red color allows cardinals to blend into shady areas, bushes, and trees where sunlight filters through the leaves and casts a reddish hue.
It also helps conceal them among autumn leaves and winter berries. Cardinals also have crests on their heads which can be flattened or raised. Lowering the crest allows them to blend into foliage better.
In addition, the females are tan and muted, which provides better camouflage while sitting on nests.
Here are some tips cardinals use to stay camouflaged:
- Perching in shaded areas where sunlight casts a red glow
- Lowering their crests to create a smooth outline
- Females sitting tight on nests with muted plumage
- Foraging among autumn leaves and winter berries
Their bright coloring may seem counterproductive for camouflage at first glance. However, cardinals utilize some clever adaptations and behaviors to disappear against the right backdrops. The camouflage allows them to evade predators like hawks, cats, and snakes that may otherwise easily spot them.
Roosting Height
Cardinals prefer to roost high up in trees at night. The average roosting height is around 15 feet off the ground, but they have been spotted as high as 40 feet up. Here are some key reasons why cardinals roost high:
- Being higher up provides more protection from terrestrial predators like raccoons, foxes, and cats who hunt at night.
- It allows them to spot approaching aerial predators more easily.
- The higher branches are often concealed by foliage which helps hide them.
- It keeps them out of reach of most nocturnal predators.
Interestingly, a study found that cardinals roosting lower than 13 feet were at greater risk of predation. So the higher, the better when it comes to safety. Males also tend to roost slightly higher than females on average.
The height gives cardinals a vantage point to spot danger and take flight quickly. It’s an important adaptation to avoid becoming prey for the many hungry predators active at night.
Coping With Winter Weather
Cardinals are well adapted to cope with winter weather, but it can still be challenging for them at times. Here are some of the main ways cardinals deal with the cold months:
Fluffing Up Feathers
Cardinals fluff up their feathers in winter, creating an insulation layer against the cold. The tiny feathers trap air close to the bird’s body. This helps them retain body heat and stay warm even when temperatures drop below freezing.
Seeking Sheltered Roosts
Cardinals roost in sheltered spots at night to avoid wind, rain, and snow. They often roost in dense conifers, thickets, brush piles, or cavities. Males and females may roost together or separately. Roosting with other birds can also help cardinals stay warm through shared body heat.
Conserving Energy
To get through cold nights, cardinals reduce their activity levels to conserve energy. They mostly stay still on their roosts and fluff their feathers. Shivering generates a small amount of heat but also burns many calories. So cardinals try to avoid shivering if they can.
Withstanding Cold
Remarkably, cardinals can withstand temperatures far below freezing. Their legs do not have large arteries on the surface, so less heat gets lost through their feet and legs. Thick skin on their legs also minimizes heat loss.
During extreme cold snaps, some cardinals may not survive. But most are well adapted to handle low temperatures through their effective feather insulation and cold-hardy physiology.
Variable Sleep Schedules
Cardinals have variable sleep cycles that change depending on the season. During the breeding season in spring and summer, cardinals wake up very early, often before sunrise, to maximize their time for territorial defense and mating.
However, they may take brief naps during midday when it gets too hot. At night, they rarely sleep longer than an hour or two at a time on their favored roosting spots.
In autumn and winter months when daylight hours are fewer, cardinals will sleep for longer stretches overnight to conserve energy. But surprisingly, they still wake up well before sunrise – around 4 or 5am. This early start affords them enough light to search for food and keep watch for predators.
While their overnight sleep is longer in the winter, they still tend to nap frequently during the day.
According to Audubon, it’s theorized that birds like cardinals have evolved so that one half of their brain sleeps at a time. This set-up ensures that they are still somewhat alert to approaching danger.
So while they may spend all night roosting in the same tree, they are not sleeping deeply the whole time.
A 2022 study published in Current Biology found that wild cardinals only sleep for short spurts totaling about 8.5 hours per day on average. Captive cardinals slept longer, getting about 11 hours of sleep in 24 hours.
So cardinals likely sneak in quick naps to supplement their overnight sleeping schedule, which explains their early start times.
Conclusion
As resourceful birds that thrive from Alaska to Mexico, cardinals exhibit clever sleeping behaviors tailored to withstand nature’s elements. By choosing concealed sleeping spots buffered from extreme temperatures and prowling predators, these striking songbirds wake at dawn ready to start another busy day.
Understanding where cardinals hunker down to rest their heads gives insight into how they survive and flourish across diverse habitats. So next time you spot them zipping through your garden, appreciate how cardinals quietly retreat each evening to their hidden shelters, awaiting night’s end to emerge with the sunrise.
