Mulberries are Delicious

caught a flash of orange and black and white through the window this morning and expected to find it was an oriole...it turned out to be a Black-Headed Grosbeak (almost as big as a robin), seen here with a just-starting-to-ripen mulberry in its thick beak...

here it has eaten most of it

the slightly beige color of the mulberry shows the ability of the birds to find them just before they are ready for human eating....so these birds gave me the signal that it is time to do something...

most of the berries are small and green like these

then along came a mockingbird who brought its treasure down to the ground to eat...and I realized it was time to save some for me, unlike last year when they ate them all...

reading historical fiction gave me an idea of what people used to do, which was to drape cloth over fruit tree branches to protect from bird eaters...so I am trying this...because mulberries are so delicious when they are purple/black ripe...and the birds can have the other 85%...