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The Chestnut Mystery

About a month ago, we roasted some store-bought chestnuts. They weren't very good, so we left them out on the patio for the wildlife. They very quickly dissapeared from the patio, but we never saw what animal took them (bird, squirrel?).

Chestnuts and White Oak Acorns

The day after Thanksgiving, I cleaned out the wood duck box on Sycamore Creek. I was surprised to find the chestnuts along with a half dozen white oak acorns inside the box. I know that Blue Jays fondly cache acorns and I assumed a Blue Jay stashed the acorns and chestnuts in the duck box. The entrance to the duck box is certainly large enough for a Blue Jay to enter.


After cleaning out the duck box, I looked inside a wren nest box and found three additional chestnuts inside. The entrance to the wren box is less than one and half inches in diameter. This limits access to small birds including wrens, bluebirds, titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, and perhaps downy woodpeckers. I suspect that each of these birds would be unable to grasp chestnuts and carry them to the nest boxes. On the other hand, Blue Jays would likely be able to carry the chestnuts in their bills and drop them into the wren box but they would never be able to retrieve the nuts.


On closer inspection both the acorns and chestnuts have distinctive damage marks. These marks are in pairs an equal distance apart. I suspect this is damage from a Blue Jay's bill.

Damaged Acorns

Other recent observations:

  • The first American Tree Sparrow of the season was spotted on November 19.

  • The surface of Sycamore Creek froze over on November 20 (and has since melted).

  • I found a very large crop of oyster mushrooms growing on a tree between the swamp and the creek.

  • While transplanting a red cedar and a Canadian hemlock, I was once again remined that you can't dig a hole in an esker without hitting a few rocks.






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