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Fox and pears |
25.08.2001 |
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Michael Woods |
My pear tree was promising to bear a heavy crop this year
but this has been discovered by the birds before the fruit
has had half a chance to ripen. The main culprits are gangs
of starlings and blackbirds while less frequent visitors
include magpies and, to my surprise, a great spotted
woodpecker.
These birds are doubly dishonest. Not only are they
stealing my fruit, they are destroying the pear tree’s
chances of having its seeds dispersed. Fruits are one of the
devices plants employ to spread. The seeds are packaged in
sweet-tasting flesh, often with a colourful skin, to entice
birds and other animals to eat them. The seeds are later
voided to germinate and establish themselves at a distance
from the parent plant. For this stratagem to work, the
fruits must be swallowed whole and the seeds passed out
intact. Some of our fruit-eating birds, notably the
blackbird, can swallow small fruits, such as haws, ivy
berries and bird cherries, but they only peck the flesh of
large fruits.
As Europe is not home to fruit-eating birds like
hornbills, toucans and ostriches that could swallow large
fruit such as apples and pairs it is probable that deer and
other large mammals are the principal agents for carrying
their seeds. So I was interested to see a young fox on
several occasions feeding on fallen pears. This may seem a
strange aberration for a carnivore but readers of Aesop's
fables will know of foxes’ penchant for grapes, and they
are also fond of blackberrying.
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