Winter days are often so drab and gray that any splashes of color are especially welcome during this time of year.
I am always happy to encounter the cheerful red color of male Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis), which brighten any landscape in which they find themselves. During our recent cold snap, I took this shot of a cardinal foraging in a cattail field covered in snow and ice. I think that he was busy extracting the center portions of the rose hips. (I often see the abandoned shells of rose hips scattered about, so I figure the cardinals don’t eat the entire fruit.)
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Rose hips are full of very nutritious seeds. These seeds have a hairy coating that can be irritating to humans but birds don’t seem to mind. The hips are one of the best sources of vitamin C known.
Great shot, they are one of the more hardier winter birds..:-)
They are definitely hardy. Most of the other birds that I see in the winter are whole lot less colorful, like the different kinds of sparrows and the Canada Geese.
It looks like he had quite a feast of rose hips there. Tough to do through that ice, though.