Christmas in October

Red and green are the traditional colors of Christmas. There are differing reasons why. According to one site I looked at, use of these colors dates back to the 1300s. As the site puts it, many believe the green represents the eternal life of Jesus while red symbolizes his shed blood. 

Viburnum and berries, 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

However, a different site ties the red to advertising, specifically the suit Santa wore in Coca-Cola's first Christmas-themed print ad, which was extremely successful. The green is thought to be related to holly and other evergreens as part of the holiday's pagan past.

Right now, in October, you could say Christmas has come early for the birds.

The leaves of the viburnum in my backyard are a bright green, contrasting with the clusters of red berries that formed once the spring flowers faded. The same was true for the dogwood.

These fruits are important in the lives of the birds migrating south for the winter. When birds finish their overnight flights, they are very hungry and need food for the energy to continue their journeys. When it gets cold, insects are hard to come by unless they are pried out from under tree bark, as woodpeckers can do with their long, hard bills.

But for other birds, particularly fruit eaters such as robins, catbirds and cedar waxwings, my fruit-laden dogwood was like a big neon sign at a rest stop.

Dogwood berries and reddening leaves.
(Margo D. Beller)

The overabundance of rain we've had for most of this year has been very good to the trees and shrubs. This year a black cherry tree at the edge of my property was laden with fruit. At a certain point in the late summer, robins would fly out from the nearby yew hedge and pick off the cherries, sometimes being very acrobatic in the process.

These cherries are long gone. Several weeks ago I noticed the dogwood was covered with red berries. I also noticed red was coming into the green leaves. Nothing much happened except for the leaves getting redder each day. 

And then, boom: A catbird appeared from a nearby shrub and flew into the tree and moved throughout, eating. So did cardinals and house finches that didn't feel like eating my sunflower seeds. One weekday morning, as I was finishing my coffee on the porch, I saw movement in the tree and saw a small bird flitting around that turned out to be a very special guest, a Tennessee warbler - a first for my yard! It was a one-day wonder. Soon flocks of robins started hitting the tree and now just about all the berries are gone.

How did the birds know when the dogwood berries were ripe enough to eat? I don't know but I do know when the leaves had turned completely red, that is when the most birds showed up. So there may be a connection.

Black cherries before the robins got to them.
(Margo D. Beller)

Many plants fruit at this time of year. The yew hedge was filled with soft red berries eaten by birds and squirrels. The squirrels also seem partial to the small black berries that form in the privet shrubs. Crab apples are particularly prized by mockingbirds, robins and cedar waxwings.These are just a small sampling of plants whose fruits help birds during migration.  

And, of course, they also feed those birds that stick around for the winter, or those that stop their southbound flight in my area. So when the red berries of the viburnum ripen, perhaps after a few frosts, there will be food for the chickadees, titmice and other yard birds.

So these berry-producing plants (like the food from seed heads of spent flowers and weeds) are the gift that keeps on giving, both for the birds and me watching them.

Meals on the Wing

Dogwood, with reddening leaves and berries. (Margo D. Beller)

At this time of year, if I want locally grown fruit I can go to a farmstand and buy peaches, plums and apples. I could also go to a supermarket at all times of the year.  

Birds don't have that option. As they head south to their winter areas they need to find food where they can. That can mean stopping at a bird feeder or scouring trees and shrubs for insects, seeds or, my focus here, fruits.

I have plants I bought specifically to provide fruit for the birds, either during migration or into the winter. One such plant is a dogwood tree, which has lovely pink flowers in spring. Its leaves are among the first to go into fall coloring. It has provided many red fruits for the taking.

In my yard and beyond there is a smorgasbord of food Nature has set out for migrating birds that will sustain them on their journey. In my previous post I showed some of the plants that provide nectar and seeds for the birds in return for pollination or spreading the seeds. However, here I focus on plants that provide fruit the bird (or squirrel) eats, digests and expels, another way of perpetuating the species.

Here are a few of the many fruiting plants I've seen in my travels (I took these photos):

There are over 150 different types of viburnums that flower in spring and fruit in fall. I see them in the woods and along stream beds. This one, an arrowwood viburnum, I planted in my yard. For the first three years I kept it surrounded by fencing but it made it hard for MH to mow around it and on windy days the fencing would be blown on the plant. Worse, no bird went for the berries. This year I didn't put up fencing, which made MH happy as well as the deer, which snacked on the leaves they could reach as fast as they could grow. (I never see viburnum browsed in the wild.) Luckily, the plant grew tall and the deer could not reach the flowers or these berries at the top, which I hope will feed the birds.

Many of the plants in my backyard were either put in by previous owners of my house (such as the apple tree) or sprang up in areas and left alone. I've see privet in many a yard. Its flowers have a sickly sweet orange smell (its other name is mock orange) but the hedge grows tall and thick and is very good for privacy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered several privet plants along my backyard border fence (widely separated, unfortunately). These are privet fruits that will go blue-black when ripe.

Wild grape vine (like poison ivy or Virginia creeper, which also provide birds with fruit) will take over if allowed to spread. This one, not in my yard, has foliage that looks like fig leaves but there are others whose foliage looks like a spade. The berries ripen from green to blue and are very popular with sparrows, from what I've seen in my travels.

Multiflora rose is considered an invasive species and I am continually pulling up plants that take root in areas where I don't want them. However, there are many areas where I leave them alone because the white roses, unlike modern hybrids, smell wonderful and the robins, catbirds and occasional mockingbird enjoy the rosehips. Left alone the thorny plants can grow to be very tall and will then grab onto the nearest plant to continue its ascent. This photograph, from a recent hike, was taken from below the rosehips.

Unlike the cultivated strawberries you can buy in the grocery store, wild strawberries are smaller and not as sweet. They are also available for me to pick in autumn as well as spring. I am finding wild strawberries all over the yard (we don't spray pesticides or weed killer) but, unlike the equally spreading ground ivy, I leave the plants alone because I enjoy the fruit as much as the birds.