Many animals put aside preserves for winter: humans do, squirrels do. Do finches?
Over a period of a few days this January, Pine Grosbeaks cleaned the berries off a mountain ash in my yard. The first picture, below, shows a male working at it.
As the mountain ash was now bare, the grosbeaks moved on and were subsequently seen eating (the somewhat less palatable) snowberries and then those of the black hawthorn.
Today, they were back at the same (empty) mountain ash for the first time in two months. Why?
This time the feeding was under the tree. In January, many of the berries had been dropped onto the snow and subsequently covered with fresh snow. Now the snow has melted and the birds have returned to eat the berries preserved in the snow for two months.
Were the berries dropped purposefully for later consumption, or was this result inadvertent? It was probably inadvertent, but isn’t it fun to see these birds now getting to eat the food they had caused to be preserved two months earlier?
In January, a male Pine Grosbeak eats (and drops) berries from a mountain ash.
In March, a male Pine Grosbeak came to the same tree and is eating the now exposed berries that had been dropped and preserved in the snow under the tree.
THese birds have been in my yard for about 3 weeks….