Like a fine art print by Ansel Adams, the Clark’s Nutcracker is a pleasing mix of black, white, and gray.
There are two birds that seem to be ubiquitous along the John Muir Trail: the bright blue Stellar’s Jay, and the Clark’s Nutcracker. Both are good sized birds—the jay a bit larger than a robin and the nutcracker almost the size of a crow.
The Clark’s Nutcracker (named for the Clark of Lewis & Clark fame) can be found from British Columbia all the way south to Baja California. Not all have precisely the same appearance, but, like an artfully composed Ansel Adams print, all are a pleasing mix of blacks, whites, and grays.
They build their nests in pine trees, where the female lays two-to-four eggs. For a little more than two weeks, both the male and female incubate those eggs. About three weeks after hatching the kids are ready to fly.
Once fledged, the young Nutcrackers, with their parents as tutors, learn one of the more unusual and complicated feeding routines ever discovered.
Although the birds are omnivores, willing to eat insects, plants, and even, when presented, carrion, their primary food source is the seeds from pine trees. Each adult bird is capable of collecting nearly 100,000 seeds each season. They use their strong beaks to pry the seeds out of the pine cones and then carry them to collection points in pouches they have under their tongues.
Those collection points are underground—with each bird creating thousands of them.
What is truly remarkable is this: once the birds have buried the seeds, they are able to find them again, even months later, and even if they are under a few feet of snow.
So, the next time you see a Clark’s Nutcracker sitting in a pine tree, remember that you’re looking at much more than just a pretty bird.
Good hiking, Ray
I always wondered what those birds were, and now I know! Thanks Ray!
Best,
Debra
Haha! I did my master’s on Stellar’s Jays, and part of my PhD research on Clark’s Nutcrackers, here’s a funny and true story:
while I was in grad school, our professor challenged one of the students in the lab to match the memory feats of the nutcrackers. We let the birds bury 20 or so pine nuts in a very large room that had trees, dirt and what not in it, and had the grad student do the same. The challenge was for bird and man to return to the room 4 months later to find the seeds. We knew the birds really loved pine nuts and were therefore motivated to find them, and of course this task mimicked what the birds do in nature. The student should have had more brain power than the bird (right?), but just to provide equal motivation, the wise professor promised the student a bottle of beer for each seed he could find! It was going to be a party!
Four months later, the bird performed well, easily and quickly finding almost all of the pine nuts. The graduate student was sure he was going home with a case of beer! Alas, the student failed to find a single nut, and had to buy his own beers that night. The lesson is not to underestimate animals in their own area of expertise!
Cheers,
Arla
Wonderful story, Arla! Thanks so much for posting it!
[…] Nutcracker. The real treat of seeing this bird came later when I did some research about it. It is quite the story! (Be sure to read Aria’s comment, […]
[…] Nutcracker. The real treat of seeing this bird came later when I did some research about it. It is quite the story! (Be sure to read Aria’s comment, […]
[…] One of the pleasures of walking through the Sierra nevada is the wildlife. (In earlier posts I described my Ten Best Wildlife Sightings.) Bird sightings are a subset of creature encounters, but – at least for me – they are a real highlight. If you read the blog often, you know the The Five Most Frequently Seen Birds on the John Muir Trail, and you know a little about the Clark’s Nutcracker (One Smart Bird: The Clark’s Nutcracker). […]