Eurasian Nutcracker Nucifraga caryocatactes Scientific name definitions

The Eurasian Nutcracker has a vast Palearctic range that covers much of the boreal zone from Norway to Korea and Japan, where it occupies coniferous and mixed forests, and feeds mostly on pine cones, but will also take diverse other food items, occasionally even killing and eating small birds and mammals. A few disjunct populations occur in montane regions south of the boreal zone—in various parts of China, on Taiwan, in the Himalayas, and in Europe (principally in the Alps and Balkans). The species may form groups in autumn whilst gathering seeds to cache over the winter, but most of the year the Eurasian Nutcracker is met with in pairs or solitarily. It starts breeding very early, when snow is often still lying on the ground, but the birds are then able to benefit from the seeds they cached in the ground during the previous autumn.

Although principally resident, the subspecies N. c. macrorhynchos is famously prone to occasional irruptions caused by episodic failures in the pine seed crop, which can lead to the birds dispersing widely, exceptionally up to thousands of kilometers beyond their regular range, and becoming more catholic in their choice of habitat. The first report of such behavior dates from the mid 1750s, and the most recent large-scale irruption in western Europe (and elsewhere) occurred as long ago as 1968, and involved the displacement of several thousands of birds, which included more than 300 individuals as far west as Britain (1 Érard, C. (1970). L’irruption de Cassenoix mouchetés en France durant les années 1968-69. Alauda 38(1):1–26. Close , 2 Hollyer, J. N. (1970). The invasion of Nutcrackers in autumn 1968. British Birds 63(9):353–373. Close ).