Cardinal-grosbeaks paint the New World red, yellow, and blue
Cardinalidae, the cardinal-grosbeaks, are New World passerines bundling cardinals, grosbeaks, buntings, and some tanager-like genera. Breeding males often blaze in red, yellow, or blue. Most species are monogamous open-cup nesters with shared incubation, and IUCN lists most as least concern—though the Carrizal seedeater is endangered.
No single physical trait defines the family; membership rests on molecular evidence. Its songbirds range from average to fairly large, 11 to 28 cm long, with stout builds, pointed wings and nine visible primary feathers. Most live in trees, but the dickcissel is a ground bird of the prairies. Grosbeaks, seedeaters and cardinals carry heavy bills, buntings and the warbler-like Granatellus small ones, and some Piranga tanagers have serrated edges on the upper bill.
Bills mislead, though. The blue grosbeak and the Cyanoloxia grosbeaks are really kin of the buntings, and the cardinalid tanagers sit closer to the cardinals. Males and females differ in colour: males are often red, orange, blue or black, females duller. In many temperate species males moult after breeding into a plainer, female-like dress, and the indigo bunting passes through four plumages in its first year, while tropical males stay bright all year.
Older classifications treated the group as a tribe of finches, united by heavy seed-cracking bills. A 2007 mitochondrial study by Klicka, Burns and Spellman, sampling 34 of 42 species, moved Saltator, Parkerthraustes and Porphyrospiza out to the tanagers and brought Piranga, Habia, Chlorothraupis, Amaurospiza and the supposed warbler Granatellus in. It sorted the family into six lineages, including a blue group and a masked group containing Cardinalis, and later work has backed that scheme.
Studying moult patterns, Guallar and colleagues proposed in 2021 that the family's ancestor lived in forest and that its descendants moved into open country many separate times.
Source: Cardinalidae
