A strong instinct: Fitting acorns into holes

February 8, 2023 7:11 AM

An exterminator in Santa Rosa, California recently discovered 700 pounds of acorns stashed in the wall of a local home. According to The Guardian: acorn woodpeckers – peculiar little birds with a shock of red feathers on their head – ... are prodigious acorn collectors. Normally, the birds store thousands of acorns in small holes they drill into dying tree stumps, which they protect with outsize pluck. “But that instinct to fit an acorn in a hole and store it is pretty strong with these guys,” explained Angela Brierly, a PhD researcher at Old Dominion University who studies the species at the Hastings Natural History Reservation.

... Generations of woodpeckers can take up to 100 years to perforate large trees with 50,000 acorn cubby-holes, said Brierly. The birds form polyamorous families with up to seven males and four females, who are joined by other relatives that help them raise their young.

Sometimes staging spectacular battles, these families defend their granaries in oak forests across coastal Oregon, California and Mexico. “Of course these are acorn woodpeckers,” Brierly said. “So their entire ecosystem, life history and way of living revolves around acorns.”

As noted above, woodpecker polyamory turns out to be a thing, which is news to some of us. Please check out the first previously listed below. In my opinion, it did not get the love it truly deserves.

Previously/relatedly on the blue and the green:
Three Brides For Seven Brothers (September 2020)
How to discourage the Woodpeckers (April 2022)
“This is not what normal birding is like” (March 2017)

posted by Bella Donna (18 comments total)

Similarly, here is a video of workers removing acorns from a microwave antenna. (The title says squirrels put them there, but the captions say that woodpeckers put them there. Who knows?)
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 7:18 AM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Reminds me of Mark Twain’s What Stumped The Bluejays.
posted by LizardBreath at 7:31 AM on February 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

So one day in the fall of 2020, a woodpecker pecked a hole in the side of our house and worked its way into the gap between the floor and the air ducts. It skittered around in there for a day or so. We bent back one of the vents to create an opening and waited for it to find its way out.

The woodpecker found its way out of the floor and into our dining room in the middle of one of my husband's Zoom classes. He interrupted the lecture to turn his computer around so the entire class could watch me catch the madly fluttering woodpecker bare-handed and put it back outside. (The students loved it.)
posted by daisystomper at 7:47 AM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]

So, it turns out woodpeckers love things that amplify their pecking sound as part of their courtship ritual ("drumming").

They REALLY like amplifiers like a metal chimney or a metal slide.
posted by lalochezia at 7:52 AM on February 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

I love these birds! Somehow most descriptions leave out the fact that their call sounds like crazy monkey noises. It’s the background music to a lot of my hikes.
posted by q*ben at 7:59 AM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Sounds rather sphexish to me.

What'd they do with all the acorns?
posted by grokus at 8:12 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

700 pounds of acorns

Reaction shot
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:21 AM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Squirrel loads up parked truck with 158 kg of walnuts
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 8:41 AM on February 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

An exterminator in Santa Rosa, California recently discovered 700 pounds of acorns stashed in the wall of a local home. According to The Guardian

Caught the early train back to London,/
41,000 acorns tied in a sack
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:47 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Once when I picked up my car after an oil change, the mechanic reported that when he opened up the oil pan* a ton of acorns poured out on his head. Our best guess is that an industrious squirrel had been uh... squirreling them away there.


*I have no idea if that's the right word.
posted by mcduff at 8:48 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I spend time in a place with a lot of these acorn woodpeckers. they are really pretty little birds. they absolutely make a sound like laughter a la Woody Woodpecker.
posted by supermedusa at 9:08 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Has anyone checked to see if Woodstock was in the area? He may be in disguise.
posted by JDC8 at 11:39 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

A couple of summers ago, we were entertained by the nonstop efforts of a red squirrel who ferried every pinecone in the area into my neighbour's eaves.

(Yes I informed the neighbour; but since there was no leak or other problem, it's down on their todo list. I wonder what the R-rating of pinecones is.)

And last year, small downy woodpeckers pecked three 1" holes in our wood siding - the corner caps specifically. Grrr.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:05 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is my hole!
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

I wonder what the R-rating of pinecones is.

They're rated R because they aren't safe for (throwing at) children.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:28 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I first saw one of these granaries in the Santa Cruz mountains. The bark of the tree, redwood I think, was riddled with nitches, each with an acorn within. I read somewhere that it's an extra bonus for the bird if the acorn has a grub inside; extra protein.

The very sad thing here is that the birds spent so much effort secreting away food they'll never be able to harvest. I hope they had other stashes too.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:22 PM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you're in the Eastern US, our own red-headed woodpeckers also hoard acorns, although not quite at the rate of the acorn woodpecker.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:04 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

That's NUTS.
posted by wellvis at 5:41 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]