Habitat
They prefer coniferous forests of spruce, fir, pine, hemlock, larch, and western red cedar. During winters they have been known to use orchards, scrub, parks, plantations, and shade trees as habitats. They use cavities in dead parts of trees as a nest and they like to use aspen trees because of the softer wood. While they sometimes reuse nests, they never use nest boxes.
During the summer they mostly eat insects and other arthropods such as beetles, caterpillars, spiders, ants, and earwigs and they also feed these to their young. During the fall and winter they mostly eat conifer seeds that they may have stored from earlier in the year. They also eat from feeders. Given a choice they typically choose to eat the heaviest food available and if it’s too large to eat they’ll jam it against the tree bark until they can break into smaller pieces.