Being Seasonally Savvy: Cashing in on Caching

Right now chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and jays are hiding food to retrieve and eat later this season. This behavior is called “caching.” Caching helps birds survive during bad weather and when food sources are low. These birds can store hundreds of seeds a day. Each seed is placed in a different location and they generally remember where each one is, even months later.

By providing a foundational feeder filled with their favorite foods, you can help your birds with their caching needs. Recent research has shown that a consistent and reliable source of food helps birds to build body fat reserves, reduces their physiological stress and helps to maintain a healthy body condition.

Chickadees prefer to cache black oil sunflower seeds; often eating a small portion before hiding it in and under bark, dead leaves, knotholes, clusters of pine needles, gutters, shingles and in the ground. Chickadees caches more in the middle of the day when visiting feeders. 

Titmice are rather particular. They choose the largest sunflower seeds available to eat and cache. Titmice and chickadees like to cache seeds within 130 feet of bird feeders; your yard or a neighbor's yard. Often, they tuck seeds into the bark and crevices of a wood pile or on a large branch. They even cache them under mulch in a garden.

Nuthatches prefer heavier sunflower seeds over the lighter ones. Be sure to have some sunflower chips in your blend, too, as they like these 25% more than ones in the shell. They prefer to hide foods on deeply furrowed tree trunks and the underside of branches. Nuthatches are also known to hide seeds under a shingle or behind wooden siding.

Jays love to cache peanuts, sunflower seeds, acorns and pine nuts. They are especially fond of peanuts in the shell. They bury them in the ground and are known to cache about 100 in a day; emptying a feeder in no time. Watch for them make repeated trips to your feeders (or an oak or pine tree) and fly off. They can travel up to two miles to bury their nutritious treasure.

Caching: Remember or Die!

Would you stake your life on your memory?

For many of us, probably not! But if forced to, how would you deal with a situation where the ability to remember where you put some food would be the difference between life and death? Well, if you could mimic a chickadee, you would simply grow more memory cells to make sure you don’t forget!

Amazing -and true!- here’s how it works. Each fall, chickadees begin caching seeds by the thousands. By storing seeds, they ensure they will have something to eat during harsh weather and when natural foods become scarce in the future.

In a behavior called scatter hoarding, each seed they collect is individually hidden in a unique location. Common storage sites include under tree bark, dead leaves, clusters of conifer needles, in knotholes and even under house siding and shingles. Chickadees have the extraordinary ability to accurately remember the location of each and every one of the seeds they hide for months to come!

It all has to do with their hippocampus, the region of the brain that stores locational memories. In chickadees, it is proportionately larger when compared to birds that do not cache food. Not only is it larger, it even increases in size each autumn and shrinks back down to its original size by spring. More space, more memories! Then wipe them clean when they are no longer needed. Pretty darn cool!

Other birds share this same caching behavior, including nuthatches, titmice and jays to name a few. Favorite targets for them to cache from your feeders can include sunflower and safflower seeds, tree nuts and peanuts.

As a nod to this month’s National Peanut Day, be aware that Jays love to cache peanuts! They are especially fond of peanuts in the shell. They bury them in the ground and are known to cache up to 100 or more of them in a single day, emptying your feeder in no time. Watch for them to make repeated trips to your feeders, then to fly off (up to two miles!) to bury their nutritious treasure.

They will remember… and survive because of it!

Be sure to check out the WBU Nature Centered Podcast episode, “Sharing Survival Strategies.” Our entertaining hosts, John and Brian, will share the best ways to attract the widest cast of caching characters to your own backyard this fall.