Chickadee and Nuthatch Food Cacheing

[JW Mills]

There are two areas at Lambton Woods where I feed the chickadees on occasion.
Now I know that chickadees will cache food for the future but while I see them take a peanut and fly away I have not actually seen them cache it. They do not seem to store the nuts within the immediate area.
 
Today at the spot where I hand feed, one chickadee picked up a peanut from my hand and proceeded to stuff it up my coat sleeve!
 
At my non hand feeding site I leave the peanuts on a log. Today a Red-breasted Nuthatch showed up. I watched as he took the nuts and stuffed them in log crevices or under tree bark mostly within my sight! From what I could see each cache held only one nut. I would say the one Nuthatch made off with as many peanuts as 4 to 6 chickadees.

[Sahria]

There is a crevice in my maple tree where I haven't seen birds hide things, but have seen many birds spot and pull things out from. I always wonder about that

[RKD]

On the same topic I have two stories.

A few weeks ago was watching my blue jays come to collect the 'peanuts in the shell' I throw out for them. At the time they had competition from the squirrels. One blue jay sat silently in a nearby tree watching as a squirrel buried a peanut in the grass. As soon at the squirrel leaves, in he swoops to nab that peanut for himself.

Another time a blue jay pushes a peanut into the grass to hide it. He then picks up 2 separate leaves from nearby and covers the peanut. I was just amazed at the apparent intelligence of these birds

I loved your "one chickadee picked up a peanut from my hand and proceeded to stuff it up my coat sleeve!" awesome!!