Birds are headed for a rough winter here. The honeysuckle berries that the birds rely on during the winter have already dried up and fallen off. The bushes themselves are dying now too. The wild rose hips are like hard little rocks at this point. No wild grapes either.
I’ll put out a lot of seed and suet but I can’t save them all.
Not just the birds. The blackberry crop in Kentucky and Tennessee just dried up on the canes, and the bears in the mountains didn’t have anything to fatten up on this summer. Already there are reports of more bear-garbage issues than normal. A lot of bears will get into trouble this fall.
A bumper crop of chokeberries, wild grapes including goosegrapes, wild cherry, huckleberries, teaberries, mushrooms and persimmons.