Birdlife: Hoarders: woodpeckers that store food

The colorful red-headed woodpecker, with an entirely loss head, gathers and stores acorns and nuts for a winter food add. On Dec. 18, Norris Christmas Bird Count participants counted a record high number of 16 red-headed woodpeckers. The previous gamey number was nine. Count compiler Charles “ Chuck ” Nicholson of Norris thinks the high winter count is credibly because of last fall ‘s exceptionally large acorn crop. Red-headed woodpeckers eat chiefly hard mast crops like acorns and beechnuts. A big acorn crop means more red-headed woodpeckers may winter in the area. These woodpeckers are known for irregular migrations and movements based on the scarcity of acorns and beechnuts. Red-headeds are one of only four woodpeckers in the world ( all four happen in the U.S. ) that regularly store food. They ‘re besides the alone woodpecker that covers and conceals stored food with wood or bark.

Tennessee birds that do n’t migrate long distances must sometimes cope with pantie and irregular winter food supplies. One strategy for coping – the strategy of hoarding – is to collect food while it is plentiful and stash it away for the tend times to come during winter. alleged larder-hoarders store all their food items in one position ( akin to our pantries ) while scatter-hoarders store food in many different places. Red-headed woodpeckers are both. The initial storage of nuts may be in one rate – the pantry. Red-headeds cursorily gain and hide as many nuts as possible before competitors like squirrels, aristocratic jays, baseless turkeys and other woodpeckers get them first. Nut and acorn caches may be concealed in big tree cavities by dampen bark and wood. belated, a red-headed woodpecker may go back to the pantry to move and store the acorns in many different disperse locations. It ‘s safer not to keep all the acorns stored at one web site. A rival could raid it and get the entire hoard. Or the acorns could all rot at once. Acorns may be moved from one crevice to another or even turned over and aired to slow decay. sometimes red-headed woodpeckers break acorns and nuts into small pieces and push them into crevices in wood posts, tree cavities, natural cracks and under bark. They besides store food in gate posts, railroad track ties and under house shingles. They can hammer acorns into crevices so tightly that other animals are unable to remove them. Red-headeds sometimes have a particular invest – an “ anvil ” site like a flat-topped tree stomp – where they take nuts to break them into little pieces for eat and storehouse. Red-headed woodpeckers store acorns and nuts from fall into early winter by carrying one item at a time in the bill. They pull nuts directly from the tree by hanging top down. Once a corner is stripped of nuts, they collect fallen nuts from the grind. Besides acorns and beechnuts red-headed woodpeckers store corn whiskey kernels, pine seeds, grasshoppers and crickets for winter retrieval.

The cold the winter, the more store food is retrieved. Acorns have a long shelf life. With their hard, protective coatings, they can be stored for about a year. Red-headed woodpeckers defend winter territories and guard food memory sites from intruding birds and small mammals. Tennessee ‘s early woodpecker that stores food – the red-bellied stores food by and large in disperse cracks and crevices in trees and posts – does not defend its stored food supply. other Tennessee birds that store food in descent and winter are blue jays, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatches, red-breasted nuthatches, brown creepers, dunce shrikes and american english kestrels. In the western U.S., Lewis ‘ woodpeckers hoard by stuffing acorns into cracks in utility poles and tree bark. western acorn woodpeckers are fanatics when it comes to hoarding. One family chiseled about 50,000 little holes into one corner and gorge every hole with an acorn. Marcia Davis may be reached at 865-330-BIRD ( 2473 ).

source : https://unianimal.com
Category : Birds