Ray Collier Country Diary- Berries

Berries - 6th October 2008

This Autumn has seen a marked decrease in some areas of the amount of berries, fruits and seeds on trees and shrubs in and around Inverness and for that matter in other parts of the Highlands. Perhaps the most notable is the lack of rowan berries that so many birds rely on to boost their body weights for the winter months ahead. The lack of the bright red berries is particularly noticeable as in the last two years there have been such bumper crops the branches were weighed down. The beech mast is also poor and although some birds such as wood pigeons can find alternative food smaller bird such as bramblings may find it difficult. Their problem is that they will have to join chaffinches foraging in open fields where modern farming techniques means there is little seed left behind.
In contrast there seems to be a bumper crop of apples both the crab and, in particular, the domestic apples. In the wild the distribution of both is confusing as they hybridise and the latest plant Atlas of 2000 combines all records as if they were all native. Records are scattered in and around Inverness with a few on the west coast but virtually none in Caithness and Sutherland. Some birds such as blackbirds will attack the apples when they are still on the trees although most birds wait until the apples fall or surplus apples are put out in gardens for the birds. Other birds will take them, especially other thrushes such as redwings and fieldfares, pheasants and some starlings will take them. The mystery over the starlings taking apples is that whilst some of them are enthusiastic over eating them others completely ignore them.
Some mammals will eat apples and one perhaps comes as a surprise, namely the badger. Whilst they have a reputation of feeding mainly on earthworms they in fact take a wide variety of food. Their diet may include mammals and birds but they will also take berries and apples as the opportunity arises. In one garden near Inverness at the beginning of November surplus apples were put out on a small lawn for the blackbirds with three or four feeding on them at any one time. The general idea was to put the apples out at dusk so that the birds could have a good feed at first light the next morning. One morning the remains of one apple indicated something else had been feeding on it and there next to it was the dropping of a pine marten. Based on studies in northern Scotland the food of the pine marten includes birds, mammals, often as carrion, and frogs and toads. Eleven percent of its diet is fruit and nuts so it is not surprising that apples are taken.
In the last two weeks an experiment was carried out in a garden just south of Inverness where red squirrels come in daily to peanuts and other nuts in containers. Small apples were put out in a variety of situations including on the ground and wedged in the fork of branches which the squirrels frequented. For three days whilst apples were attacked by blackbirds the red squirrels seemed to ignore them. Then one morning a red squirrel was seen scurrying along the branch of a tree with one of the apples, whole, in its mouth. We tend to think of red squirrels taking seeds out of cones or biting into a hazel nut and splitting them into two. A recent innovation has been red squirrels raiding bird feeders in gardens and this now seems to have extended to apples.