LogFAQs > #973304383

If you go out and find a few of the treasures from chocographs you have found, a certain one will give you the river upgrade seen above. You'll be able to peck somewhat faster and I think it also increases your power to some extent, too. At level 8 or 9 without upgrades it'll take several pecks to dig the more valuable items and each of those pecks will be quite slow.

Also worth mentioning that there are multiple locations and that changes happen to them as you go through more evolutions. In the final area with a maxed out chocobo, you can potentially get thousands of points from a single game.