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Clark's Nutcracker

A bird I had never seen before and I was excited to meet up with ten one day. It is named after the explorer William Clark, after the Corps of Discovery found it while camping with the Shoshone Indians in Idaho on the Lemhi River, August 22, 1805.

 

Their primary food source is the seeds of pines. All of these Nutcrackers have a sublingual pouch capable of holding 50-150 seeds. they normally store them in the ground for later consumption in caches of 1-15 seeds. A single Nutcracker could cache as many as 98,000 seeds per season! This bird has a remarkable long-term spatial memory letting it relocate caches of seeds with accuracy (9 mos later and even under 3 ft of snow). Both parents care for the young in incubation and feeding.

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Uploaded on January 6, 2015
Taken on December 17, 2014