Cherry Pecking

There is a cherry tree by the hedge. In April, as the blackbird seduced with pure slow notes tinged with melancholy, white blossom burst from the branches.

In June we stood on the path and looked up. The cherry was marketed as a compact variety, but defied all efforts to restrain its growth and reached a height of twenty feet, or thereabouts. High above us long branches were lined with immature fruit. It was a very heavy crop.

The fruit continued to swell, and in early July I took four black plastic bags, put a few of the lower branches in each and waited. As I feared the uncovered green fruit began to disappear. More than once I passed the tree to hear a flapping of wings among the leaves and see a hen blackbird fly into the hedge.

In mid-July I removed the black bags to reveal plump, gleaming cherries the ripest of which were dark as wine. Above them the branches had been stripped of fruit. As I put the luscious fruit into a tub I heard a loud squawk from the hedge.

Biting through tight skin into juicy flesh, I reflected on how amazing it was that a single bird could consume such an enormous amount of fruit in such a short time and not suffer from belly ache. Perhaps an active substance could be isolated from the blackbird’s digestive system, patented and sold to travellers.

An observation a couple of days later caused me to abandon this idea. There were cherries lying in unexpected places distant from the tree. Perhaps the hen blackbird was not the greedy guts I imagined her to be, but a devoted mother bringing food to hungry chicks.

Earthworms, insects, seeds and berries, it is stated in Wikipedia, are the food of blackbirds. During the breeding season protein-rich animal material is the grub of preference. But, what if no earthworms can be found, as happens in areas where the New Zealand flatworm has become established? Are the young then fed mainly on fruit and seeds?

One day genetic engineering may bring us cherry-flavoured flatworms which will mate with natural-flavoured ones to produce cherry-flavoured offspring. What a treat they would be for baby blackbirds!