Acorn Woodpecker Granaries

The Acorn Woodpecker is found in parts of the western US. It chips small recesses out of trees to fit the acorns it will harvest throughout the fall. A family of Acorn Woodpeckers may use this storage tree, or granary, for generations. Some of them hold as many as 50,000 acorns. So does the Acorn Woodpecker just kick back and munch acorns all winter? Nope! In the weeks after a fresh acorn is lodged in a hole, it dries and shrinks. So Acorn Woodpeckers spend much of the winter shuttling acorns from one hole to another, finding just the right fit.

More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. 

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