We enjoy seeing several pairs of cardinals that visit our feeders. This is one of the females that perched on the seed bell yesterday. She let both Damsel and I get fairly close to the bell before she flitted away. Both of our cameras were clicking away as we approached. I got this shot using the 300mm telephoto lens on my Canon SL1 from about thirty feet away. Damsel got another shot of her from a much closer distance using her Canon T3 and the standard lens at 55mm focal length.
With our mild winters, we see the cardinals all year around. We even saw one of them on the last day of 2014 which was our only snow day in six years.
This is from Wikipedia:
Although some controversy surrounds bird feeding (see bird feeder for details), an increase in backyard feeding by humans has generally been beneficial to this species. It is listed as a species of least concern by the IUCN Red List. It has an estimated global range of 2,200,000 sq mi and a global population estimated to be about 100 million individuals.