Clark’s Nutcracker

Nucifraga columbiana

Caches up to 98,000 pine seeds per year and remembers most of them. Whitebark pines depend on this bird to exist.

Population: ~270,000 mature individuals (Partners in Flight, 2016 estimate, per BirdLife DataZone assessment); population trend suspected stable
Habitat: Open subalpine and montane conifer forests near treeline, roughly 900–3,900 m elevation, with seasonal altitudinal movement to lower elevations in winter
Fun fact: Clark's Nutcracker carries pine seeds in a specialized pouch under its tongue and can cache tens of thousands of seeds each autumn, later relying on spatial memory to relocate most of them for up to nine months, though recall accuracy declines after about six months.
Range: Western North America, from British Columbia and western Alberta south through the western US to Baja California and central New Mexico, plus an isolated population on Cerro Potosí, Mexico; occasionally irrupts north to Alaska and east to the Great Plains in poor seed-crop years
Diet: Primarily pine seeds (especially whitebark and limber pine, also foxtail, bristlecone, western white, ponderosa, and pinyon pines, and Douglas fir), harvested and cached (30-150 seeds carried per trip in a sublingual pouch, up to 15 miles) by the tens of thousands each year and relocated by spatial memory; also insects, small rodents, nestling birds and eggs, amphibians, carrion, and (at feeders) peanuts and suet
Size: 0.3 m
Wingspan: 0.61 m
Lifespan: 17 years

More Clever Corvids