Clark's Nutcracker

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) was created in 1977. An advisory panel to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, made up of wildlife biology experts from various backgrounds across Canada. They assign risk categories to flora and fauna included in its current mandate. In 2003, COSEWIC was established as an advisory body for the Species at Risk Act (SARA). When the official list of wildlife species at risk is established, the federal government will take COSEWIC designations into consideration. Thereby, wildlife species qualify for legal protection and recovery under the Species at Risk Act.

 Currently, limper pine has no status under SARA, but has an endangered status under COSEWIC as of November 2014. A pathogen by the name White Pine Blister Rust, Mountain Pine Beetle and climate change are the reasons behind this status. At the current rate of a one percent decline in its population per year, two thirds of mature individuals will be gone over the next 100 years.

 Education and conservation work are taking place to help the limper pine population. A keystone species that provides high-fat food sources through its pine nuts for small mammals, bears, and birds, including the Clark’s Nutcracker. This species has a mutually beneficial relationship with limber pine. Nutcrackers can collect as many as 35,000 seeds and carry and cache them in the ground as far as 10 kilometers away. Not all get consumed by the nutcrackers; some are taken by other animals, and the remaining may take root, resulting in new limber pine trees.

Clark's Nutcracker and Tree Swallow

 As the sun was rising I was out walking the trails, birding, listening for sounds that helped me decide if I wanted to stop and look for the bird or keep walking. After being out there for over an hour I heard the calls of a Tree Swallow. The timing was right, they are back in the mountains. A minute later I saw two Tree Swallows in the air and a tree stump where their nest resided. As I stood watching the swallows a Clark’s Nutcracker came up onto a dead tree from the ground. I focused my eyes and my camera toward it and took its picture, then again when it perched top of the stump that contained the nest cavity of the swallows. The nutcracker went down to the cavity and started pulling on something. I thought, the swallows are not nesting yet, must be an insect or something related it was pulling on.

I put my camera on the nutcracker as it tried to pull on something again, That’s when I realized one of the swallow was in the nest, perhaps to do some spring cleaning. The nutcracker was trying to catch it. The nutcracker lost its hold, but some swallow’s features were pulled off. The swallow poked its head out of the nest and sent out a warning alarm, its mate responded and was circling and trying to get the much larger nutcracker to fly away. The nutcracker grabbed the swallow again and with some effort pulled it out, the swallow broke free but not before loosing more feathers. The swallow free from the nutcracker started flying in circles pursued by the nutcracker. Clark’s Nutcracker found in the mountains of the west, member of the Corvidae family, which include jays, crows, magpies and ravens. We associate it with eating pine seeds, does also eat insects, squirrels, chipmunks, voles, toads, carrion and birds. But that morning the bird it was trying to catch escaped to live another day.

Clark's Nutcracker

Today we had our local Christmas Bird Count, where we volunteered to see how many birds we can find in a selected area. My friend and I had the Vermilion Lakes and the Fenland Trail around the Town of Banff. It was much warmer then last year, temperature went above freezing by few degrees and the wind did not arrive until later in the day. The day started with about 76 Ravens flying overhead and we ended it by seeing several chickadees and nuthatches. All together we saw 14 species of birds, not bad for winter day in the mountains. One of the favourite highlight was watching this Clark's Nutcracker looking for dead larvae in a vacant wasp nest.

Until next moment,

Amar

Birds

Few days back I had gone for few short hikes to take pictures of birds. First I decided to explore the Hoodoo Trail and spotted several birds, but only able to get close and take decent pictures of Gray Jays and Clark's Nutcrackers. Nutcrackers were going after the pine nuts from the pine cones and cache they had hidden.

Then went over to the Vermilion Lakes and spotted two Bald Eagles, one close enough to take a photo of.

Until next moment,

Amar

Clark's Nutcracker

I started working in the Banff Park Museum NHSC August 2005, and it did not take long for visitors to ask me questions about birds.  It was easier answering questions about the common birds spotted in town, but beyond that I needed help. Having few hundred mounted birds in the museum was going to bring up lot of questions.  So I decided to learn about these feathered friends, read books and web pages and as well getting knowledge from those around me. The more I learned, the more interested I became. But it was mid September 2006 when I first tried to take a picture of a bird, which was of a Great Blue Heron standing in the middle of a marsh, with rain coming down. Took the picture with a compact camera with a three time zoom, the GBH was a small but important part of the overall picture.

I took few pictures of birds here and there, but in 2008 birds started to become one of my main subjects for photography.  I started to go for walks or hike just to find and take pictures of birds. Have to have lot of patience when taking pictures of birds, it helps if you find your photography subject interesting.  For the Great Blue Heron, I had to wait until April of 2009 to get good close up pictures. Most of the pictures I take are of birds not used to being near people, so I have to learn to adapt to their environment in order to get the pictures I want.

Attached is a picture of a Clark’s Nutcracker, which has this amazing relationship with Whitebark Pines. Nutcrackers feed on the Whitebark Pine seeds, eating some right away and storing many more at a time as cache. They can have up to 10s of thousands of these caches, food stored in the ground for those winter months. They like to store the seeds in an open windswept area, making it easy to find.  Those they don’t find, get a chance to become future Whitebark Pines.  This bird was comfortable with people, and was hoping for food, I instead offered to share its image with friends.

Until next moment,

Amar