Eating Cedar Berries

As far as I can tell, Eastern Red Cedar fruit production was about average this year. It’s hard to estimate because most of the fruit is in the upper half of the tree. Only a small percentage of trees have any fruits low enough on the tree for easy viewing.

Big cedars can produce quite a load of fruit. This tree could easily produce a crop of fruit with seed enough to cover Blue Jay Barrens. Cedar fruit supports large flocks of birds through the winter and dropped seed produces an army of cedar seedlings trying to infiltrate the prairies.

Here’s an example of why I don’t post many bird pictures. On this day, Bluebirds were feeding on the fruit. They would come out to the branch tips to gather some fruit and then disappear back into the greenery to find a branch stout enough to sit on. You could hear them moving about inside the tree, but you never knew where they would come into view.

When I got too close, the bluebirds took refuge in a nearby Tuliptree. Remnants of the old flowers combined with Bluebirds and blue skies make this appear to be a spring scene. I can almost imagine the fragrance of the early spring blossoms.

The birds must have felt secure at the top of the tree. While I wandered around looking for a suitable angel for photos, they conducted some personal grooming. Eventually they moved on to some cedars farther down the ridge. I wandered off in a different direction and left them to their meal.

Fruit

I’ve been paying close attention to fruit development this year. An untimely frost in the spring killed a lot of the flowers on the blooming shrubs. Three months of drought has stressed many of the fruit developing shrubs. I’ve noticed many of the Blackhaws are carrying shriveled fruit.

The Blackhaw fruit may not be of the best quality, but at least it’s here in abundance.

Areas along the creek held moisture longer into the summer and the Blackhaw fruits are fuller and much more abundant.

Leatherwood, a shrub of the deciduous forest understory, is showing far fewer fruits than would be expected in a normal year.

The bright red Leatherwood fruits seem to glow in the woodland shadows. These fruits won’t last long into the winter.

Flowering Dogwoods are still showing drought stress, but they all have produced a normal crop of fruit.

From a distance it appears that the Dwarf Sumac are carrying a heavy fruit load this year.

A closer examination shows the fruit to be nothing but a dried skin over the seeds

There’s nothing much left for fruit eaters. Dwarf Sumac isn’t a favorite of the birds, but they depend on it late in the winter season when all the other fruit is gone.

You can always depend on the non-native Multiflora Rose to produce a heavy crop of fruit. This reliable production of fruit that appeals to such a wide variety of wildlife is the reason this shrub was planted all over the countryside. Its invasive tendencies were not discovered until it was too late. This may be the fruit that keeps overwintering Bluebirds from starving this winter.

Another reliable fruit producer, also a non-native, is the Japanese Honeysuckle. Fragrant flowers and abundant wildlife-friendly fruit were the reasons for planting this vine. What really concerns me is the lack of several common fruits. Grapes, Elderberries, Poison Ivy, Buckthorn, Fragrant Sumac, Prickly Ash, and others have produced no fruit this year. I’m going to keep a close eye on berry consumption this winter and see if I can notice any changes in the local bird population when the available fruit disappears.