Scared now

[altariel]

So in our back garden we have this amazing cherry tree (now much bigger than shown), and over the past couple of weeks it has been cooking up the most amazing crop (it's been hot then wet then hot again). Over the past week, the local blackbirds and starlings and assorted others have been feasting. Today I looked out and thought, "Right, time for my share," and out I went with a chair and this fine and sturdy piece of Lock'n'Lock.

The birds fled. I went round the tree for a while, picking and nomming, and I may have been humming 'Cherry Ripe'. And then I heard, up above me, high at the top of the tree, a murmuration of starlings. It became a clutter, then a gathering, then a concentration and then a fucking scary load of starlings, all yelling down the road and out far into the fens that SOME BITCH WAS NICKING ALL THE CHERRIES. All of sudden I was starring in a Hitchcock movie.

Well, the other week I faced off a huge green-eyed and hissing black cat - nay, panther - that is trying to claim our garden as its territory and has been worrying the polyamorous blackbirds in the hedge, so I thought, "Starlings, no sweat," and picked on fearlessly. It was touch and go for a bit as they rocked the tree around and screamed obscenities at me and then, WHOOSH - they all flew off. In a cloud.

Now, pie.

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Bag 'em before the blackbirds get 'em. Can you cover over the strawbs in some way?

[raspberryfool.livejournal.com]

Well, i could net them but it's not really worth it, the boids their feet stuck. My solution is to pick the fruits daily and ripen any stragglers inside. And like you, we don't begrudge the boids their pudding, just take exception to them taking the lot.

As for cherries, i know a few wild trees near an ex-workplace. I sometimes picked half a carrier bag of black cherries. Those would have filled a few pies.

Garden fruit = fantastic. Free wild fruit = fantasticer.