Handsome

I knew that we had a lot of cardinals in this part of the state but I had no idea that they were so abundant in the winter months. It seems like all I see when I go to the bird blind are cardinals. I was not going to post another image of a cardinal for a while until I met this handsome guy. So, here you go.  Meet another Northern Cardinal.

I have said pretty much all there is to say about Northern Cardinals but I did find an interesting fact about wildlife in general. There is an organization called the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). They have developed a system called the IUCN Red List that is designed to assess the conservation status of species all around the world. The purpose of the organization is to determine the relative risk of extinction, and the main purpose of the IUCN Red List is to catalogue and highlight those plants and animals that are facing a higher risk of global extinction. Plants, fungi and animals that have been evaluated to have a low risk of extinction are classified as Least Concern (LC). The categorization rises from there based on their extinction risk. The next level is Near Threatened (NT), Vulnerable (VU), Endangered (EN), Critically Endangered (CE), Extinct In The Wild (EW) and Extinct (EX).

The Northern Cardinal is classified as Least Concern and I can validate that classification!

This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5DS using my Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Sports Lens set on 600 mm. The camera was set on Aperture priority mode with the aperture set at f/6.3, shutter speed at 1/640 and the ISO set at 1600. This is a single image processed in Lightroom.

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© 2015 T. Kahler Photography