BIRDS AND FRUIT Writing about birds and their taste for
fruit, a Glasgow reader remarks, 'Hereabouts, in market garden and allotment, straw- berries are seldom netted. It is not birds that hole these but slugs, mostly a tough black one that afterwards riddles Golden Wonders and other late potatoes but not, they say, Kerr's Pinks. Birds again may take an odd raspberry but around here clumps of unnetted raspberries stand to go bad if the fruit is not picked. Blackcurrants are wholly untouched although this is not so with redcurrants, which the birds like. Even where they can be reached from the ground gooseberries seem safe—too big to swallow?—but the discarded skins of those eaten ripe are left lying where they fall. In drought one might think birds would welcome another thirst-quencher than worm, slug and water. From what happens here on allotments birds, even with the soft-fruit crop ready, are more likely to be still 'after live bait, rather than berries.
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