I haven’t been asked yet, but I know it’s coming. The annual search for red berries. Before too long I will end up standing in a ditch, knee deep in mud, fending off a flock of hungry birds and a rabid squirrel, trying to get a few red berries.
I am fairly confident I can outrun the squirrel, but the birds will just follow me home and eat the berries anyway. I know that from experience.
Officially, those red berries, which I tend to refer to as ditch berries, because that’s where you usually find them, are a type of wild holly. They are actually the common winterberry, a type of holly common to this area. The plant loses it’s leaves in the winter, but the berries hang on.
The berries are toxic to some animals, including us, but birds seem to be okay with them. And they will eat them. A couple years back we gathered some sprigs of winterberry for outdoor Christmas displays. Before long, the berries had disappeared. We were also noticing a few more birds flying around the house. I’m pretty sure they were eating the berries. And I’m not convinced they hadn’t just followed me home after I collected them.
We ended up replacing some of them with plastic versions, but those aren’t always easy to find. And I don’t really mind feeding the birds. If I can just convince them to leave the berries until after Christmas.
But I haven’t been noticing a lot of winterberries along the sides of the roads this year. The bright red usually stands out pretty good. And I have been checking the ditches.
Maybe the birds have already beat me to them.