could also be a baby just learning it's song, I have a ton of baby everything right now and there are definatly lots of peeps and some attemps to sound like Mom and Dad,

Thanks for the info, lisa. That could explain it. How sweet!

Not sure about the cardinal, but I noticed something weird about this thread - the main menu says 6 replies, but I only see 2 before mine?

Go figure....comes as no surprise to me. LOL

Looks like some inflammatory replies were deleted.

why would anybody be inflammatory? ;)

could be a young bird learning the song, could be a bird that just has the equivalent of a frog in the throat. We used to have a quail around here that would have his voice crack every time he did the usual "bob-WHITE" call. Each time he got to the last part it would be all screechy and off-sounding. I wonder if some birds just have impaired ability to reproduce their usual calls, or if it's an injury or something.

*chuckle*

It never occurred to me to actually observe birds as individuals before. Used to be that all cardinals sounded the same to me. How neat that each can have its own timbre and tone to its singing. I'll have to listen more closely.

Birds are even known to have regional 'dialects' , little subtle differences in their calls that vary geographically.

WHat we need now is a Professor Higgins from "My Fair Lady"

or think Cardinal with a hick redneck twang.

LOL!!! Up here they'd be saying, "Tweeeeeeeeeet-tweet-tweet-tweet-eh?"

Well, after reading this I had to tell y'all about a favorite pastime at our house in spring.
We usually order a box of chicks every spring to replenish our flock of egg laying hens. Generally we end up with 3-4 roosters in a batch of 25. When they get to be anywhere from 8-16 weeks old the roos start practicing crowing. You have never heard anything so funny as those first few weeks of crowing. We will be at breakfast and the baby chickens are kept in a pen right outside the kitchen (they have to be pretty close to full sized to be put in with the adult flock). Anyway we are all at breakfast choking on our juice and cereal because of the general clumsiness of the crowing. And when we try to go watch they always clam up, we just know they are mortified!!
Annette

I guess adolescence is tough no matter what species you are....

and by the way, we are so hicked-up here that our barred owls say "who-cooks-for-you-uns"
just kidding (really I'm not but the neighbors will figure out I'm talking about them)