bird baldness II

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I heard from Kathy McGinnis-Craft about bald cardinals. She forwarded the following from "Bird Watchers Digest":

"There's a bald bird at my feeder. What happened to it? Birds use their bills and feet to preen all sorts of nasty stuff out of their feathers - dirt, excess oil, mites, lice, ticks. But the one place a bird can't preen very well is its own head (sort of like that place in the middle of your back that itches, but you can't reach). When a bird, such as a cardinal, gets an infestation of feather mites, it can't get rid of all the feather-eating pests on its head. Combine this with a bird's annual late-summer feather molt (when most songbirds lose and replace almost all of their feathers gradually), and you may see a bird with no feathers on its head or neck. Until the new feathers grow in, the bird is seemingly bald. A bald cardinal looks black-headed because its dark skin is revealed in the absence of feathers."

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