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One early November day a few years ago, I saw a flock of about two dozen migrating robins descend on a large holly bush covered in thousands of berries, and when they flew on they had not left a single berry uneaten. Having been alerted, I now routinely see robins (and no other birds) eat these berries in the fall. The few berries that don’t get taken in the fall remain until about February, when their color fades to yellow-brown and they start to drop off. Thus, even the quintessential “winterberry” caters to a select clientele of fall migrants and not to the resident winter birds at all.

One of the most enigmatic berries to me is the highbush “cranberry” (Viburnum opulus). This berry is bright red, like those of holly in late fall, but the V. opulus berries decorate bushes through winter and well into early spring, which is why they are often planted as ornamentals. The bright red is a conspicuous enough signal to birds, yet year in, year out the berries stay on the bushes for months. An abundance of highbush cranberries grow among the other berries in a winter berry patch I have cultivated next to our house in Vermont, and while birds have routinely feasted on arrowwood and nannyberry, they have always left the highbush cranberries alone. They are not poisonous—they are depicted as suitable fare in recipe books on wild fruit. Taken raw, they taste sour, but when boiled and sugared they are not objectionable, at least to humans. I was perplexed that such a “typical” bird berry was not eaten by any of the fall migrants nor by any of the other birds that were around it every day, for months. Surely, some bird must find them palatable.

Winterberry (holly).

Highbush cranberry.

Then on February 23, 2000, the mystery was solved. A flock of eighty to one hundred Bohemian waxwings (only sporadically seen here in winter) arrived and landed on a sugar maple tree above the large highbush cranberry bush at the edge of the field near the house. One bird dove down to the berries, several flock members followed, and then the whole flock descended en masse. Within a half hour the large clump of bushes that had been heavily laden with berries was stripped totally bare.

Flocks of both Bohemian and cedar waxwings were locally common that winter. Both species of waxwings were also feasting, separately, on the berries of ornamental hawthorn on the University of Vermont campus. Both waxwings live entirely from berries in the winter, but unlike most other birds, their summer diet is frugivorous as well. Thus, the highbush cranberry is perhaps the choice of the discriminating berry-bush specialists, and highbush cranberries remain bright and juicy throughout the winter as though they were being preserved specifically for late winter or early spring migrants.

Sumack.

Wild grape.

In the following summer none of the Viburnum bushes flowered and thus no berries were produced in the fall. However, I again saw flocks of Bohemian waxwings in February. This time I found a large flock in brushy young woods. I was surprised to see them there, because I saw no berries. The birds seemed to be picking buds, or so I at first presumed. Looking closer I suddenly discovered that they were picking sparse, hard-to-see, dry, shriveled, black-blue buckthorn (Ramnis cathartica) berries. Therefore, I did not find the berries by myself. I found them by joining the flock, and birds probably find berries similarly.

Staghorn sumac is also available all winter long. It has tightly packed small dry fruit that have no visible meat. The massed fruit are almost bare seeds covered with a hairy fuzz as though designed to be unpalatable. Like highbush cranberry, this sumac ripens in late summer and remains uneaten on the bush almost all winter. The berries are preserved not only by acid, as is highbush cranberry, but by dryness. Yet, in early spring, when few other berries are left and choice is correspondingly limited, they are finally eaten by robins, starlings, crows, and a variety