As the yellows, rusts and oranges of the leaves fade to brown and fall to the yard, a blue jay lands on a feeder filled with sunflower seeds. It pops one, two, three, four, five, a total of 10 seeds in its mouth before flying away.
This jay is not hogging all the seeds.
Like other birds this time of year, it’s caching food for the winter. And the blue jay is quite adept at it.
When a blue jay comes to a sunflower feeder, or finds acorns or other natural foods in the wild, it can store them in an expandable pouch in its throat. Then it flies off to one of its many winter pantries to store the food for later. Jays typically store their winter cache in the ground, sometimes up to two miles away from where they found the goodies. In one study, 50 blue jays cached 150,000 acorns over 28 days.
The jay, which belongs to the corvid family, one of the smartest families of birds, often can find its stash later. But it doesn’t find all of it, and that’s how oak trees get planted. Squirrels help, too. In fact, the jay has been credited with helping oak tree groves expand after the Ice Age.
Many birds have these types of relationships with plants. For example, the Clark’s nutcracker, a bird that lives in the Rocky Mountains, is the most important seed planter and disperser for the whitebark pine tree, one of the oldest living tree species on Earth. A researcher observed that one Clark’s nutcracker cached 98,000 seeds and spread them up to 20 miles from where they were taken in a single season.
Two other birds I’ve observed caching food lately are white-breasted nuthatches and red-bellied woodpeckers. The red-bellied utters a short noisy call before landing on the peanut feeder, grabbing a piece and flying off. I watched it come and go dozens of times within an hour, snatching peanut pieces on a cool autumn day.
The handsome woodpecker with bright red on top of its head and collar flies off to stash its food into bark crevices, cracks in trees and even fence posts. If the nut is too big, the woodpecker pounds on it with its beak until several smaller pieces can easily be hidden. Red-bellied woodpeckers, like other birds, cache food year-round, but increase that activity in fall to prepare for winter. Other woodpecker species we see in northern Illinois also cache food, and include the downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker and red-headed woodpecker.
As soon as the red-bellied woodpecker flew away, two male white-breasted nuthatches came to the feeders. The nuthatch, with blue-gray back and collar and white breast lives here year-round, and also caches its food. I have watched a nuthatch take a sunflower seed and fly to a nearby tree, wedge it into the bark and then hit it to open the seed. This time of year, the nuthatches are storing the seeds in tree bark to eat later.
Birds that cache food also observe the comings and goings of others that cache food. One study showed a male white-breasted nuthatch watching a female stash food, and then after she left, grab it for himself.
My favorite year-round bird to watch at the feeders in autumn is the black-capped chickadee. In summer, when a chickadee takes a sunflower seed, it immediately flies off to a perch, puts it between its feet and hammers on it with the bill until the seed within becomes exposed and available to eat.
But in fall, I’ll watch chickadees grab seeds and fly to tuck them into tree bark, pine needle clusters, even in gutters. The chickadee, as well as other bird cachers, may recall where their winter pantries are located by noticing landmarks such as a nearby pine tree, or even the orientation of the sun or the arrangement of a cluster of needles.
Studies have shown that chickadees can recall where they hid their winter food for up to several weeks or more. The part of the brain that stores locational memories in birds called the hippocampus is proportionally larger in birds that cache seeds. In cold climates, the chickadee’s hippocampus may actually grow in the fall, perhaps improving its memory of where it hid a meal.
When the snow comes, I hope the chickadees, nuthatches, jays and woodpeckers will easily find their stashes. But just in case, I’ll continue to offer extra food and enjoy their antics at the feeders.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com.