First ever Northern Cardinal

Cornell University's Great Backyard Bird Count lists the Cardinal as the most frequently reported species.

According to the recently published Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario, it nests in all of the survey squares immediately south of the shield in Peterborough County. They occur only sporadically north of the shield. Until today, we'd never seen one on the north shore of Stony Lake. Indeed, we've considered the absence of this species, whose geographic range is centred to the south, to be one of the more boreal aspects of our area. Is this bird, perhaps a young male, a vanguard in an population known to be expanding northward?