Did you ever notice birds hiding their seed in some really odd places? Some birds do it hundreds, even thousands of times, going back and forth with beaks full of seed.
Are they like squirrels where they remember where they put them? You bet they do, no bird brains here. Well actually birds are pretty intelligent for their size. It seems better than us always looking for where we left our keys last.
There are quite a few that cache food, but the most common and easily seen are the Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch and the Chickadee.
The first bird I ever noticed doing it was a Nuthatch putting seed inside crevices in the mortar joints of my garage. He went on all day stuffing seed in to openings. Funny thing was other birds were watching and when he left to get more seed, they proceeded to take what was stored for themselves.
Just gotta get it in there.
The next bird I saw do this was a Titmouse. He had a better plan by storing it in the bark of downed trees. It made discovery a bit more difficult for the thieves.
I have read where some birds have remembered thousands and thousands of caches. The leader among the hoarders in my garden seems to be the Blue Jays. I have watched them cart up to four peanuts in one trip. I understand, they can carry even more at onetime in their throat.
Maybe throw in a distraction.
I think it is pretty amazing birds do this. Science study estimates chickadees cache as many as one hundred thousand food items per year, not even reusing old cache sites. They do all this without olfactory cues and rely on spacial and object-oriented landmarks.
You would think the birds are trying to keep seed dry by selecting a cache based on protection from the elements, but that is not the case.
They do it out of concern for the seed being robbed by other birds as I mentioned on the Nuthatch. Finding good locations really is something on which their life depends.
Storing food for lean times makes these birds pretty resourceful in my book, even pretty smart. Now who calls these birds bird brained?
Next, is that a robin doing that?
This entry was posted in Birds, garden and tagged Bird caching behavior, Birds Caching, birds storing food for winter, Cache, garden, nature, photos, seed cache, Tufted Titmouse, White Breasted Nuthatch, Why do birds cache?, winter birds. Bookmark the permalink.
Beautiful pictures, Donna! I love the Tufted Titmouse. Had one at my house last year, but haven’t seen them around here yet this year.
I had no idea birds did that! That’s amazing.
Really interesting! Great that I learn so much more about birds. I started to look around for birds :). Great photos!
Most of mine seem to sit and crack them open all day long but that would explain the 300 lbs of food we went through last year 😦 who knew I had a bunch or hoarders possibly lurking in my yard 🙂 Cool shots as always!
Great post. It’s so much fun to watch them.
I guess it also helps the spread of plants when the cache is forgotten and grows?
A great read, and so informative I actually think you could probably, with very little effort, turn it into a fun kids’ ebook. I understand that this is important instinctual activity, but here in our urban area, where things can be more uncertain for our bird friends, we’ve cut down on the lean times with a few new squirrel proof bird feeders around our home. Thanks again for a fun post!
Nicely done! I love captures of behaviours such as these.Watched a Magpie once for a long time as it stuffed things into the crevices of our stone steps.
Wonderful that you could catch birds demonstrating this behavior. When I think of birds doing this, I always think of Bluejays.
It is interesting that some birds use landmarks to find the seeds they have hidden and cannot find them if the landmarks have been changed. This reminds me of bees that come back to where they left. If you move the hive while they are gone, they won’t be able to get back home.
That is so cool Donna, never realized they did that!
This explains why the chickadees make hundreds of trips a day between our feeder and the trees in the ravine at the bottom of our back yard. I thought that either a few chickadees were being pigs or that I was supporting a huge clan of chickadees.