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Post by Tringa on Oct 21, 2019 15:12:04 GMT
Not sure of the best place to put this, so decided on here.
The garden has a few rowan trees and cotoneaster bushes, and one hawthorn. All have a lot of berries now.
However, around the garden we are finding small clumps of berries on the ground, as in the attached photo. At first I thought these were being eaten by animals(pine marten, badger or birds) and then passed out. The berries do not look digested, even partially, and now I think they might have been eaten, irritated the animal, and were regurgitated.
So far we have found about six such clumps. I thought animals were able to distinguish between edible and non-edible/poisonous plants.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
Thanks
Dave
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Post by rowanberry on Oct 22, 2019 8:23:22 GMT
I can't quite make out what sort of berries they are... are they a mix of all three of the ones you've got growing? They look like cotoneaster berries mainly- I would think only birds would eat those, but I can't think why they'd regurgitate them, either.
Maybe something is just gorging on them because they're plentiful, but overdoing it a bit?
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Post by Cotham Marble on Oct 22, 2019 9:05:27 GMT
I've seen similar caches of rosehips made by a woodmouse, and watched as it carefully extracted the seeds. The flesh of rosehips is of course particularly indigestible, containing as it does irritant fibrous material, but many berries have a purgative effect precisely to ensure safe passage of the seed, so maybe these berries are also being 'mined' solely for the seeds.
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Post by Tringa on Oct 23, 2019 10:58:03 GMT
Thanks RB and CM. The berries in the photo are probably from a cotoneaster.
Dave
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