5:00 p.m. Thursday, September 24, 2009

Berries provide pre-winter fuel

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By Charles Seabrook

For the AJC

This is a good time of year for berries.

Charles Seabrook, for the AJC American beautyberries are abundant in Georgia’s woods now and supply nourishment for a variety of wildlife.

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It’s hard to walk down a wooded path — or even in your yard — now without coming across a variety of wild, ripe berries. Fall berries, fruits and nuts are prime food for wildlife getting ready for winter. Fall migratory songbirds southbound for the winter especially favor berries as high-energy fuel sources.

Some of Georgia’s most common berry-producing plants popular with wildlife include:

● American beautyberry, a shrub whose dense clumps of eye-catching lavender berries are familiar to almost anyone venturing into the woods this time of year. Beautyberry grows all over Georgia in a wide range of environments, moist or dry, sunny or shady. The berries are eaten by more than 40 songbird species and deer, raccoons, Virginia opossums, armadillos and numerous small rodents. The leaves are also a common food for white-tailed deer. The berries will persist into winter and provide vital nourishment during the cold months.

● Dogwood, whose white flowers bloomed so beautifully in spring and have now turned into bright red berries. The berries have some of the highest fat contents of any native fruits. They are readily eaten by many songbirds, including robins, cardinals, white-throated sparrows, tufted titmice, towhees, thrashers, bluebirds and juncos. The Eastern chipmunk, gray squirrel, skunk and other mammals also favor them.

● Virginia creeper, a seemingly ubiquitous vine often mistaken for poison ivy, although it’s harmless to the touch. Virginia creeper’s berries are ripening now to a deep indigo blue. More than 35 bird species, including thrushes, woodpeckers, vireos and warblers, eat the fruit.

● Wild grapes, or muscadines, which are high in sugar content and therefore quick energy sources. The ripe grapes are a favorite of raccoons, rabbits, opossums, foxes, ruffed grouse and wild turkeys and cardinals, mockingbirds, robins and other songbirds.

● Poison ivy, which is the bane of gardeners but a source of highly nutritious berries for wildlife. More than two dozen bird species — especially the Northern flicker — eat poison ivy berries, which appear as green clusters on the vine in late summer and turn a waxy white in early fall.

● Pokeweed, whose purple berries also are poisonous to people but harmless to birds that gobble them up in the fall. The berry-eaters include mockingbirds, gray catbirds, thrashers, robins, bluebirds, Carolina chickadees and Carolina wrens. That purple mess splattered on your car this time of year probably came from a bird that ingested pokeweed berries.

In the sky

The moon was first quarter Friday night. Tonight and through most of next week, look for it in the south at sunset and setting about midnight. This is the best time of the month to look at the moon with a telescope, because the shadows cast by mountain tops and crater rims can be seen easily, said David Dundee, an astronomer with the Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Mercury is low in the east just before sunrise. Venus rises about two hours before the sun. Mars rises out of the east about 1 a.m. Jupiter rises out of the east before sunset and is high in the south by 10 p.m. It will appear near the moon Tuesday night.