The Bountiful Cone Crop

The mountain chickadee appeared in great haste. But that is not surprising, as he was uncertain how long the bountiful cone crop would last before the gala feasting of his friends. At intervals his seried fluting or penetrating ank-ank assured three other white-breasts that he was still hard at work in the locality, rather than drifting on through the moss-draped branches in their customary manner of roaming the pinelands. One regular member of the troop, however, a female downy woodpecker, was not to be diverted from her usual diligent inspection of the tree-trunks. She bobbed from bole to bole, working over each thick-barked butt near the ground, unmoved by the effervescent spirits of the merry picknickers.

But a constant succession of shrill, beady notes, seeming to come from everywhere in the needled greenery, told that an accompanying flock of golden-crowned kinglets shared the holiday, if not the nutlets. Almost wholly insectivorous, they still caught the excitement of the occasion, fluttering ecstatically at the burdened branch tips or swirling in twos and threes through the evergreen vigorous effort on the part of the chickadee foragers. They worked with the slippery, rounded nutlets clutched tight by tiny feet, holding them fast in crevices of the rough bark, then struck repeated blows with small, conical bills. Punctuating their gurgled tsik-a-dee-dees, the continuous, light-pitched piping of red-breasted nuthatches came from all about. These bob-tailed midgets seemed just to be hurriedly carrying pine nuts around, stopping only occasionally to extract another from the open, sharply-hooked scales of a russet-cone.

From twig to branch, up and down trunk, and on to swaying needle-cluster they flitted in desperate haste and excitement, seed in bill, with little time to feast and never sure of any cache or crevice to which to trust their prize. "Nutty," the white-breasted Rocky Mountain nuthatch, busied himself storing the harvest. Usually he tried several places before he was satisfied with a crotch, bark scale or crack in or under which to hide his garnered seed. Thrusting it deep in a narrow bark-furrow, he would wedge it tight with sharp pecks.

Occasionally chickadee or nuthatch swung down close among the dead, lichen-decorated lower branches. From here they might scrutinize their observer from different and apparently illuminating angles with beady, bright eyes. Finally only two crossbills remained, clinging to cones in the high, breeze tossed needle-tufts of the forest crown. But, after less than thirty minutes, the entire company returned. Insistent, reedy pipes of nuthatches and thin notes of kinglet and chickadee announced the band before its talkative arrival. The crossbills came swiftly, their freer flight being through or above the treetops. Again the carnival among the cones was re-enacted, with the difference that five Clark's nutcrackers flew noisily over.

By: davidbunch

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