How long do wild birds live? The general answer, for songbirds, is four or five years, if the bird survives its first year of life.
Until we began banding birds methodically in the 1950s, our only information on their ages came from captive birds.
Cardinals were popular cage birds until well into the twentieth century. A caged northern cardinal is on record as living for 28 1/2 years. In the wild, the extreme upper longevity record is 13 years and 8 months.
A captive bald eagle lived more than 48 years; in the wild, one would be old at 10 years.
JIM GILBERT
