Clark’s nutcracker
A Clark's Nutcracker doesn't travel far for the holidays. It's not a Christmas ornament. Instead, it’s a member of the crow family, colored gray with black wings and tail tipped in white, and a pointy bill, the better to collect food with. In Colorado forests and across the west, Clark's nutcrackers prefer treelines, with seasonal migrations of only a few hundred yards, up and down slopes to weather storms and find food. That comes from pines — specifically, pine nuts, collected in a pouch behind their tongues and cached across the landscape, where some sprout into new trees. The diet of the Clark's nutcracker also comes from people, which explains a nickname: Camp Robber. Any time of year, opportunistically, they’ll swoop out of the pines and swipe your trail mix — as may have happened when the bird first entered the scientific record in 1805, thanks to the Lewis & Clark expedition.
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