Nucifraga

Nucifraga, the nutcrackers, is a genus of four passerine species in the crow family Corvidae closely related to jays and crows, established in 1760 by Mathurin Jacques Brisson with the northern nutcracker as type species. Their name, from the German Nussbrecher meaning nut-breaker, reflects a bill specialised for extracting seeds from pine cones; individual birds can cache up to 98,000 pine nuts a year, remember 75 to 90 percent of cache locations, and disperse seeds up to 32 kilometres from the source tree, farther than related corvids. The four species are Clark's nutcracker of western North America, the northern nutcracker of central and northeastern Europe through northern Asia to northeastern Japan, the southern nutcracker of the Himalayas to northern China and Taiwan, and the Kashmir nutcracker of the western Himalayas, all assessed as Least Concern and none migratory, though they may disperse during food shortages.