I have fed the birds and squirrels in my yard for many, many years and during most of that time there has been a pair of northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) living in the area. Each year they bring their fledglings to the feeder and teach them how to feed themselves. It’s a cycle I have always enjoyed, so when I got into photography, it was just natural that I would want photos of Momma and Poppa, as I call them. I have taken numerous photos of them and they are pretty used to me, so they allow me to get relatively close to them (I don’t want to encourage them to allow people to get too close). A couple months ago, I bought a new telephoto lens, so they seemed like good subjects to try it out on. While I was shooting, Momma never came down, so I suspect she was sitting on eggs, but Poppa was there before I even put the food out. In fact, he started scolding me when I took a few shots before feeding him! Once the food was there he really dove in. At one point he looked up with kind of a sheepish look in his eyes and seeds all over his beak. It reminded me of a kid who got caught into the cookies when he wasn’t supposed to be. Luckily, I was able to capture that in this second image.