Fall's a nutty season. I usually compete with wildlife for a day or two, collecting a sack of nuts that I later crack and offer birds on a platform feeder.

Nuts and fruits of trees are collectively referred to as "mast." Fleshy fruits and berries are called "soft mast," and nuts are called "hard mast." Apples abound, and persimmons will sweeten after the first 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 seems. Daily competition from squirrels, chipmunks, deer, mice, turkeys and jays is intense.

Timing is critical. I've got to find newly fallen nuts before the critters do.

Acorns, the fruit 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 thrives.

It's difficult to visit a woodlot 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, squirrels relocate many, but not all, of their hidden treasures.

The harder shells of walnuts, hickory nuts and beech nuts are more difficult to crack than acorns.

Squirrels and other rodents easily gnaw through the tough shells. Bears simply crush them.

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.