Jays bury thousands of acorns and forget enough to plant oaks
Scrub jays and related corvids cache acorns one by one in soil across wide territories — tens of thousands in a productive mast season for a busy bird.
Memory is good but imperfect. Forgotten caches sprout into oak seedlings spaced away from the parent crown, exactly where a heavy nut would rarely roll unaided.
Oaks outsource dispersal to birds with maps in their heads. Every forgotten pantry is a tiny reforestation project written in beak and soil.
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