In 1776 the English illustrator John Frederick Miller included a hand-coloured plate of the red-crested cardinal in his Icones animalium et plantarum.

It is also similar to the yellow-billed cardinal (P. capitata), but the latter bird has a black throat, darker upper parts, and a bright yellow bill.

[7] This species can be found mainly in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul, southern part of the Pantanal, northern Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

[8] Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and heavily degraded former forest, at an elevation up to 500 metres (1,600 ft) above sea level.

[7] This species mainly feeds on seeds (of Chloris virgata, Eleusine tristachya, Setaria parviflora, and Spergula villosa), fruits (of Celtis tala, Grabowskia duplicata, Holmbergia tweedii, Morus alba, and Sapium haematospermum), insects, and small arthropods, generally searched for on the ground in pairs or small groups.