January 2, 2025
From the Winter 2025 difficulty of Dwelling Fowl journal. Subscribe now.
When 2024–25 Bartels Science Illustrator Lauren Richelieu was requested to create artwork for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s vacation card, her thoughts went instantly to the Northern Cardinal. The Maine-born-and-raised artist says that to her, the cardinal is a “traditional winter chook” that symbolizes “heat, hope, and resilience” throughout a season within the North that may be fairly barren. “By way of this work, I strove to seize the essence of my chosen topic, inviting others to know the fantastic thing about the Northern Cardinal,” she says, “and think about them as an emblem of nature’s enduring spirit and quiet class, even within the depths of winter.”