Patterns of movement and orientation during caching and recovery by Clark's nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana

Clark's nutcrackers regularly store large numbers of pine seeds and remembe r the locations of the cached seeds. Although they are very accurate, they do make same errors during recovery. In an attempt to determine whether any behaviours during caching predicted the occurrence of errors during recove ry, we videotaped Clark's nutcrackers while they cached and recovered seeds under laboratory conditions. We used the videotapes to develop complete, q uantitative descriptions of caching and recovery behaviour, with an emphasi s on body orientation and directions of movement. During caching, the birds showed the greatest change in their orientation and direction following ca che creation. During cache recovery, in contrast, body orientation changed most following successful recovery of a seed. When orientation while making a cache was compared with orientation when recovering the same cache, orie ntations were similar more often than would be expected by chance. However, this consistency of direction was not related to the accuracy of cache rec overy, indicating that such consistency is not necessary for accurate cache recovery. The location in which the birds chose to place their caches was the only variable that predicted the location of probes during recovery. (C ) 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.