Do cardinals mate for life?
There seems to be some evidence that Cardinals do indeed spend the entire year with the same partner. But saying that they mate for life gives us the impression that they spend decades of bliss together until they retire to some Cardinal condo in Ft. Lauderdale. The fact is, a Cardinal life expectancy isn’t much longer than a year. So the cute Cardinal couple that has been coming to your feeder for years is probably many different birds. Although there are records of some Cardinals having lived more than 13 years in the wild, they certainly would have had many different mates over that time. Perhaps even as many as Liz Taylor.
