I have said this before, but it’s good to be the king! Or at least that’s how dominant male cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) seem to feel. If you watch these birds for long it’s pretty easy to figure out who the dominant male is. He’s the one that all the others run away from and look over their shoulders to avoid. But even when no other birds are around, they usually have an air of dominance about them. It shows in their confidence and in their body language. It also shows in the places that they choose to perch and in the songs they sing. This fellow is the dominant male in the woods on my property and perching at the top of this snag in the center of the woods was one way of showing it. A few minutes before I took this shot he had also been singing, which is one of his ways of marking the territory as his. But even without that knowledge, if you look at the perch and at the pose, it’s not hard to see that he is the top bird. I often feel bad for the fledglings when these dominant males run them off a territory, but it is all part of the behavior that allows the species to thrive. After all, if he allowed all his sons and daughters to stick around, there wouldn’t be resources enough for new blood to come into the area.