SCOTT SHALAWAY Collecting nuts is for the birds -- and family

Each October, for at least one day, I swap my binoculars for a burlap sack and head into the woods to collect some natural foods for both me and the birds. It's nut collecting season, and this year walnuts seem to have produced the bumper crop. The walnut trees I'm planning to visit have been hanging heavily with ripening nuts for weeks.
The nuts and fruits of trees are collectively referred to as "mast." Fleshy fruits and berries are called "soft mast;" nuts are called "hard mast." There are still some apples to be found, and the persimmons will sweeten after the first hard frost, but for now I'm concentrating on hard mast -- acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts and beech nuts.
Collecting freshly fallen nuts isn't as easy as it might seem. Daily competition from deer, turkeys, chipmunks, mice and squirrels is intense. Timing is critical. I've got to find newly fallen nuts before the critters do.
Acorns, the fruits of oak trees, are the most important form of mast in the eastern deciduous forest. Oaks dominate upland forests, city parks and backyards. And where oaks are common, wildlife abounds. Mice, bears, raccoons, jays, nuthatches, woodpeckers, turkeys and wood ducks are among other species that find acorns irresistible.
Squirrels
It's difficult to visit a wood lot in October and not notice a squirrel enjoying an acorn. When not eating, squirrels busy themselves gathering nuts for the winter. They bury them just an inch or two below the leaf litter. Months later, guided by smell and memory, they relocate many, but not all, of their hidden treasures.
Gray squirrels can actually distinguish between white and red oak acorns, perhaps by smell or taste, and they treat these two types of nuts differently. Red oak acorns lie on the forest floor through the winter and germinate in the spring. By scattering nuts throughout the woods, gray squirrels not only insure a winter food supply, they also disperse the oaks.
White oak acorns, on the other hand, germinate shortly after they fall. By transferring energy from the nut to a rapidly growing taproot, many white oak acorns escape the jaws of hungry squirrels.
Not to be outdone, gray squirrels counter with an ingenious learned behavior. When a squirrel collects a white oak acorn, it notches the shell with its incisors and removes the embryo. This makes the nut incapable of germinating, but it retains most of its nutritious meat for the squirrel.
Hard shells
The shells of walnuts, hickory nuts and beech nuts are harder and more difficult to crack than acorns. Squirrels and other rodents easily gnaw through the tough shells. Bears simply crush them with their powerful jaws. Even some birds are capable of eating these harder nuts. Nuthatches and woodpeckers find the weakest seam on a nut and hammer it open. Other birds swallow nuts whole and rely on their muscular stomach -- the gizzard -- to grind up the shells. A turkey gizzard, for example, can grind up several walnuts in just four hours.
To make my bird feeders more attractive, I crack the harder nuts before putting them on a tray. This allows smaller birds such as chickadees and titmice to eat these high energy foods and saves larger birds the work required to open intact nuts.
After watching birds flock to a tray of nut meats, it's easy to understand why several bird-food manufacturers now add nut meats in their better mixes.
Though this knowledge of nuts and the animals that eat them motivate me to spend a few hours afield, I must confess I don't save the entire sack of nuts for the birds. They get all the acorns, but I reserve the best walnuts and hickory nuts for my family. We snack on them all winter long. And my wife adds them to the banana breads and molasses candies for the holidays. Home-made goodies are always appreciated, but when laced with some of nature's special treats, they somehow taste even better.
XSend questions and comments to Dr. Scott Shalaway, R.D. 5, Cameron, W.Va. 26033 or via e-mail to sshalaway@aol.com