Clarks's Nutcracker (young?) - [Explored]

in Explore 2021-01-11 (#426)

Rocky Mountain National Park

 

Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), sometimes referred to as Clark's crow or woodpecker crow, is a passerine bird in the family Corvidae, native to the mountains of western North America. The nutcracker is an omnivore but subsists mainly on pine nuts, burying seeds in the ground in the summer and then retrieving them in the winter by memory.

 

Food

The most important food resources for this species are the seeds of pines (Pinus sp.), principally the two cold-climate (high altitude) species of white pine (Pinus subgenus Strobus) with large seeds P. albicaulis and P. flexilis, but also using other high-altitude species like P. balfouriana, P. longaeva and P. monticola. During migrations to lower altitudes, it also extensively uses the seeds of pinyon pines. The isolated Cerro Potosí population is strongly associated with the local endemic Potosi pinyon Pinus culminicola. All Clark's Nutcrackers have a sublingual pouch capable of holding around 50–150 seeds, depending on the size of the seeds; the pouch greatly enhances the birds' ability to transport and store seeds.

 

Clark's nutcrackers store seeds, usually in the ground for later consumption, in caches of 1–15 seeds (average of 3–4 seeds).[5] Depending on the cone crop as well as the tree species, a single Clark's nutcracker can cache as many as 98,000 seeds per season. The birds regularly store more than they actually need as insurance against seed theft by other animals (squirrels, etc.), as well as low availability of alternative foods; this surplus seed is left in the cache, and may be able to germinate and grow into new trees, if the conditions are right. Through this activity of caching and over-storing, the bird is perpetuating its own habitat. Closely tied in with this storage behavior is the bird's remarkable long-term spatial memory; they are able to relocate caches of seeds with great accuracy, even nine months later, and even when the cache sites are buried under up to a meter (3 ft) of snow. Its powers of memory exemplify the high intelligence of the Corvidae.

 

 

 

Done