Kissing Cardinals

A pair of cardinals, at the moment they touch beaks.

In late winter you will sometimes catch two cardinals on the same branch, close together, and see the male pass a seed directly to the female. Beak to beak. It takes a second, and then they carry on as though nothing happened.

Courtship feeding is the proper name for it. Every person who has ever seen it has called it something else.

We had the pair cut as one piece, caught at that moment, because it seemed a shame to separate them.

Cardinals hold together. A pair will keep the same territory season after season, and both birds raise the brood — she sits the eggs, he brings food to the nest and goes on feeding the fledglings after they leave it. They are not a showy species in that respect. They simply stay.

It is given as often for an anniversary as it is in memory of someone, and both seem right to us.

Set it at chest height where two people will pass it — beside a door, on a gatepost, at the head of a path.

Specifications