Oh Nuts! Thank you for Caching!

Add a peanut feeder to your backyard and watch the birds go nuts over this tasty treat. Peanuts attract birds such as jays, chickadees, woodpeckers, nuthatches, bushtits, titmice and wrens. Along with seed and/or suet, all of these birds will eat peanuts, which are high in fat and protein. It is fun to watch the behavior and antics of birds that come to peanut feeders.

Peanuts in the shell, or out, can be offered in mesh feeders, on tray feeders and in a variety of other specialty feeders. Watch as jays choose peanuts to cache for retrieval later by making repeated trips to feeders to gather morsels and hide them in a safe spot. They hide each cache in a different location. This is called scatter hoarding.

Blue Jays will bury nuts and seeds up to 2½ miles from their a mated pair work together to hide their food items and thus, both of them know the location of their hidden supply. original source, which is a record for any bird. This behavior has greatly helped with the range expansion of many oak species. Due to the jay’s habit of burying acorns over a wide area, 11 species of oak trees have become dependent on Jays for the dispersal of their acorns.

Similarly, due to the Steller’s Jay’s habit of burying pine nuts, several species of pine trees have become partially dependent on them for the dispersal of their seeds.

The Canada Jay stores food items by using its sticky saliva to glue them to branches high up in trees. This food is always available, even during the deepest snow periods.

Scrub Jays bury many more acorns than they consume, thus helping to renew many species of oak trees. Woodhouse’ Scrub Jays have been known to cache up to 6,000 pine seeds or 5,000 acorns in a single autumn.

Like most jays, Pinyon Jays store hidden caches of food. But unlike other jays, both members of a mated pair work together to hide their food items and thus, both of them know the location of their hidden supply.

As with all bird feeders, it is important to keep your peanut feeders clean, especially during wet or humid weather. When peanuts get wet, they can quickly spoil. Mold or fungi can cause problems for birds or other animals that eat the spoiled food. Use soap and water to scrub feeders and, if needed use a 10% bleach solution to sanitize.