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How does a titmouse eat a blueberry?



Same way it eats a sunflower seed:  by holding it clasped between both feet
and stabbing it repeatedly with its beak. I guess I shouldn't be surprised,
but I was, a little, as I watched a titmouse chow down on a blueberry this
morning -- part of a little frenzied feeding group in my blueberry bushes:
a pair of cardinals, a pair of red bellied woodpeckers (who took each berry
back to a tree-trunk perch before eating it), a couple of chickadees and
maybe a red-eyed vireo. (I have learned that vireos can be great fruit
eaters. Last year they stripped the berries off one native viburnum in my
yard in two days.) The blueberries are now very, very ripe and full of
yellow jackets too.
Ginger_Travis@unc.edu
Chapel Hill, NC