26 September 2014
Fall is here. Winter is coming. Birds who stay through the winter are already using their best survival strategies.
Blue jays bury acorns, nuthatches hide seeds in bark crevices, but the real champion of food storage is a bird who doesn’t live in Pennsylvania.
Check out this Cornell Lab video from southern California.
Why do acorn woodpeckers need to store so much food? See the comments for Janet Campagna’s California report.
(video from Cornell Lab of Ornithology on YouTube)
It’s warm year-round, but the trees still go through seasonal cycles. Near the coast some of these birds even breed in the Fall to take advantage of the acorn crop. The challenge to survival in this climate is not making it through the Winter, but surviving the long hot dry Summers. You’re dreading Winter, we’re hoping for one. One good note, the recent 100+ heat wave killed a lot of mosquitos, so they may not have to spray for West Nile Virus, as they were planning. For whatever reason, it’s been especially bad this year. They do aerial searches for unkempt swimming pools that can be breeding grounds.
Janet, thanks for the info. I should have realized that summer is the challenge in California’s climate. We’ve heard a lot on the news about the heat and drought.