Preferential Treatment
A Kent gardener finds difficulty in explaining the behaviour of his birds to his berries. The gardener has a - number of berried hollies. One close against the side of the house is habitually cleared early in the winter, often in November. Others are not touched till after a severe period of frost. One tree not twenty yards away is not touched at all. The trees receive just the same preferential treatment in different years. As a rule, birds have the same view about holly-berries as gourmets about celery : they are not worth eating till after a frost or two. My own experience this year was that every berry from every tree vanished (thanks chiefly to redwings) during the Christmas frost. Much the most eager devourers of holly-berries are immigrant fieldfares and
redwings, and their comings and goings are eccentric. Since hollies are notoriously irregular in fruiting, it may be that the immune hollies are among the late fruiting speci- mens, and do not ripen their berries till these immigrant flocks have passed on; but the explanation is not wholly satisfactory.
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