A couple of male Northern Cardinals popping the viewer’s eyes on a foggy winter day.
This Wilson Bulletin note has them in Bristol, PA, just northwest of Philly, in 1901. But by 1920, the species had withdrawn from the limits of its northern range, which was just about New York City. Then they started coming back. Ball (1964) cites the first recent Brooklyn breeding record as 1943 (Prospect Park). Ball continues: “the increase and spread of the Cardinal in the New York City region, as well as throughout much of the northeast, particularly since the mis-1940s, and more especially in the 1950s, has been positively phenomenal.” From further north: there were no nesting Cardinals in Cambridge, MA, until the 1960s, according to this study utilizing bird surveys starting in the 1860s.
Backyard and Beyond 
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