The use of self-motion cues and landmarks by Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) during a small-scale search task

Past research has indicated that the Clark's nutcracker encodes information about landmarks into memory to return to a hidden goal during small-scale navigation tasks. However, the ability to navigate using self-motion cues has been largely unexplored in avian species, including the nutcracker. In the current study, we trained four birds to move from a position near the perimeter of a 12-sided arena into a square enclosure where a hidden goal was located. Both self-motion cues and landmarks were available to locate the goal during training. The nutcrackers were able to locate the goal accurately using only self-motion cues when landmarks near the goal were removed during testing in Experiment 1. However, the results from Experiment 2 indicated that nutcrackers weighed local landmarks more heavily than self-motion cues when both sets of cues were placed in conflict.