Birding Interlude: Clark's Nutcracker

A bird of the High Sierra's and the pines. I hung around the whitebark pines in Yosemite National Park but dipped on this bird. Today, without our bins and Fred without his zoom lens, walking along the lakeside trail in Tahoe City, suddenly a flock of Clark's - got to love birding. 

I watched them use their spike-like bills to pick the seeds out of pine cones. They are famous for collecting thousands of seeds, eating some and then they bury the rest as a winter stash. Not all seeds get retreived and that is how the pines propagate.  What a bird.

Clark's Nutcracker, Tahoe City.