CLARK S NUTCRACKER 317 



There it took its time in prying out the quarter-inch seeds, two beneath 

 each scale, and swallowed them with apparent satisfaction. * * * Another 

 bird alighted on a small tree and, as I stood only ten feet away, probed 

 cut all the seeds of a cone without severing its stalk and without 

 minding my presence." 



The nutcracker shares with the jays of the Perisoreus group the name 

 of "meat bird" or "camp robber," for, esi)ecially in winter when other 

 food is scarce, it comes freely to the camps to pick up whatever scraps 

 of food it can find, and almost anything edible is welcome; at such 

 times it becomes quite bold, frequenting the open-air kitchen and even 

 occasionally entering the tent or cabin. It invades the vicinity of 

 farms and houses, looking for kitchen hand-outs or picking up crumbs 

 of bread or waste grain in the streets. Larger scraps of food are often 

 carried away to be eaten at leisure or hidden for future use. 



It sometimes indulges in the bad habit, common to most of the 

 Corvidae, of robbing the nests of the smaller birds and devouring 

 their eggs or small nestlings. J. A. Munro (1919) says that "several 

 nests of Hermit Thrushes, Horned Larks and Pipits, that were under 

 observation, above timber line on Apex Mountain, were destroyed 

 by a pair of Clark's Nutcrackers." And several others have referred 

 to this same habit. 



Insects enter largely into the food of this bird during summer and 

 before the pinyon nuts are ripe. Some time is spent on the ground 

 hunting for beetles, ants, grasshoppers, and the destructive black crickets. 

 Some insects are caught on the wing in true flycatcher fashion ; from a 

 perch in the dead top of a tree the nutcracker watches for passing insects, 

 darts out and chases them in an erratic course, and returns to its 

 perch. Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that "two were seen near camp on a 

 log, running back and forth chasing sphynx moths that were feeding 

 from the larkspurs bordering the log." 



Mrs. Wheelock (1904) writes: "Grasshoppers and the big wingless 

 black crickets he devours in untold numbers, and grows fat on the 

 diet. Butterflies he catches on the wing in flycatcher fashion ; grubs 

 he picks from the bark, clinging to the side of the tree trunks and 

 hammering like a woodpecker." 



Decker and Bowles (1931) observed the feeding habits of a large 

 flock of over a hundred nutcrackers in the Blue Mountains of Wash- 

 ington : 



A good deal of feeding was evidently done high tip in the trees, where they 

 spent most of their time, but on freqiK'nt occasions the whole flock would come 

 down and feed on the ground. • * ♦ Their food when on the ground consisted 

 principally of the large black ants, beetles and snails. The ants being in 

 enormous numbers were eaten by the thousand, and it was very noticeable to see 



