Ecology and Behavior
It eats a very wide range of food, including many types of insects and other invertebrates (some caught in flight with some agility, including night-flying insects which it catches at dusk), eggs and nestlings, small mammals, snails (which it drops from a height onto hard stones), and various nuts and seeds. It is known for using plant material to create hooks or barbs for extracting grubs from inside logs and branches. This bird fills in the ecological niche of the woodpeckers and the Woodpecker Finch of the Galapagos, since the latter and New Caledonia lack woodpeckers. Unlike the Woodpecker Finch, however, it does not simply stab a grub and lever it slowly out of its log using a small twig but pokes the twig at the grub to agitate it into biting the twig. It shows great ingenuity in the search for food.
Its nest is built high in a tree with usually 2 dozen eggs laid from September to November.
Read more about this topic: New Caledonian Crow
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