Birds: Nutcracker
Clark’s Nutcracker, sometimes referred to as Clark’s Crow or the Woodpecker Crow, is a passerine bird in the Corvidae (crow) family.[1]
It is slightly smaller than the Eurasian Nutcracker, an avian relative, also known as the Spotted Nutcracker (pictured below).
The Clark’s Nutcracker was first spotted and identified in 1805 by William Clark, co-leader of the Lewis & Clark Expeditions. He was struggling down a canyon on the Salmon River, challenging the theory that the Indians had said the river could not be floated safely in a canoe. On his trip he noticed a new bird. He wrote notes about this new to him species in his journals.
Living high in the mountains of the West, gray-black-white Clark’s Nutcrackers are loud and conspicuous. They swoop like woodpeckers among wizened sub alpine trees, flashing “Look at Me” signs with their white tail and wing feathers. They use their dagger-like bills to rip into pine cones and pull out large seeds, which they stash in a pouch under their tongue and then carry away to bury somewhere for the winter. Each bird buries tens of thousands of seeds in the summer months and remembers the locations of most of them for harvesting in the winter. Seeds that they don’t retrieve play an important role in growing the new pine forests of the future.[1]
I remember seeing a photograph of a woman who was holding out her hand with a peanut clasped in her fingers. A Clark’s Nutcracker was in mid-air, taking the nut from the woman. The story is that the photographer had wanted this shot for years. He and his wife went to that promontory point many times each year to capture the perfect light and perfect timing. Eventually he and his wife divorced, though there is no indication it was because of the failed photo exercises. Eventually he remarried. The shot of a lifetime came a few years later with his second wife, who was captured in perfect harmony with the bird, the mid-air exchange and the surroundings.
Nutcrackers are beautiful, but nothing is worth sacrificing a relationship with the right spouse. Nothing can crack your nuts harder than a marital mistake … except maybe Tchaikovsky.
Henry E. Hooper 