By Dan Weisz
I’ve shared many photos of the Cardinal family in my backyard. The photo below looks like many you have seen, with the beautiful male Cardinal perched on a bracnh of the cholla cactus ready to fly towards the seed feeder. This is a beautiful bird in his best, colorful plumage.
![](http://wildlife.foothillsclusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/210223-01.jpg)
Every once in a while I’ll see the bird doing something interesting. Here, he seemed to say something to me. I’m not sure what, but I didn’t hear him singing.
![](http://wildlife.foothillsclusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/210223-02.jpg)
And then he suddenly began to scratch an itch. Now birds preen every day, cleaning every single feather and puttting them all in place. Here, I don’t think he was preening. He just looked like he was scratching an itch!
![](http://wildlife.foothillsclusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/210223-03.jpg)
And then he kept scratching. He is lowering his head and raising his crest here, but the scratching continues!
![](http://wildlife.foothillsclusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/210223-04.jpg)
It must have felt good, because he didn’t stop for a while.
![](http://wildlife.foothillsclusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/210223-05.jpg)
I think we can all relate to having an itch that just needed attention. This one took him a while to take care of and then, satisfied, he flew off to get another sunflower seed.