this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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It's cool that this stage idicates the adult male is changing into an adult female, its final step in development. TIL
This is not as absurd as it seems: Sequential hermaphroditism is the term
Why do he beak like that though?
Probably mites.
I was gonna say I don't think this is a normal part of the molting process...
Don't know why the beak be like that.
I have yet to see missing feathers like that myself and I have a BUNCH of cardinals and blue jays. I do see the young "punk rocker" cardinals.
But the Internet says molting feathers is true!
The only dark horror I witnessed was when a murder of crows came into the neighborhood and used my bird bath for their dark rituals for 2 weeks.
Maybe I didn't see this kind of cardinal because they didn't complete the rites to summon it?
Tap for spoiler
*Edited for being a moron and not reading OP
The head is normal molting. The beak damage can be from mite.
But the Internet says it’s true, this is molting not mites.
The person you responded to was referring to why his beak looked weird, not to the lack of feathers on his head. But I didn't see anything in the article you posted about beaks.
Oops, I wasn't sure if the missing feathers were real and also thought that's gotta be mites causing it to lose feathers.
So I just learned that myself and was like "oh wow" and didn't think too much.
Rethinking all those plans to befriend all the crows in the neighborhood
Banging his face repeatedly on windows, car mirrors, and anything else remotely shiny at 6 am while I’m trying to sleep, maybe?
Botox, some cardinals just want that plump beak look.
Watched with older sidter when I was 7 those things gave me so many nightmares
Damn, what was that called again?
Skeksis, from the dark crystal.
Oh, I thought it was a lord of change from total war warhammer 3
Honestly shocking that we didn't discover that birds \subseteq dinosaurs until recently
It's not that shocking given that all birds have feathers, and almost no dinosaur fossils had feathers until fairly recently (and they're still rare as I understand it).
The connection was made in the 19th century, it just didn't become mainstream until the 60s.
And pet peeve: "birds are dinosaurs" is only true cladistically speaking, but ordinary English is not cladistic. There is such a thing as a fish and anyone who says there isn't can fuck off.
Honestly I'm of the opinion that "fish" should only refer to bony fish anyway; sharks should be their own thing. But also yeah, let people live lmao
Yeah I totally agree. It's like grouping humans in with rhinos because we're both mammals and have 4 limbs. Sharks are so ancient they diverged extremely early and are weird as fuck. I keep learning new and interesting ways sharks are almost alien compared to bony fish. Like how they use high urea content in their blood to lower the osmotic gradient dehydrating them (salt water sucks water out of your gills) so they turn ammonia into Urea to keep some dissolved compounds around to balance the osmotic pressure.
Of course there are fishes you're one of them. A lungfish to be precise.
"\subseteq"?
LaTeX way of writing "is a subset of"
Neat, but, I have to admit, completely incomprehensible to the uninitiated 😅
Perfect, half of the sentences I say in real life are similarly indecipherable 😎 this is the #authentic #me
⊆
"Look at me! I told you I was a dinosaur!"
Ngl, the first time my hen molted, I was verklempt. She didn't get that bad, as she tends to st it in waves rather than all at once, but I was anxious as fuck all wondering if it was molting or some kind of disease
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the dark crystal
Juvenile skeksis!