Kitchen Garden Forum

Our two pyracantha bushes which are smothered in orange berries are being beseiged by various species of birds who are devouring them at a rate of knots and no doubt they will soon be stripped bare.

Our next door neighbour's pyracantha bush containing red berries is strangely pristine, with not a single bird paying it a visit.

I know there's a theory that birds avoid red berries, but as they'll happily eat rose hips and hawthorn berries, I'm wondering if there's something about red pyrancantha berries which birds don't like? Considering I planted the orange pyracantha, at least partly to enjoy some autumn & winter colour in the garden, I'm feeling slightly hacked off at the speed at which the berries are disappearing into beaks !

Hi Primrose,

In my experience the orange Pyracantha has slightly bigger juicier berries particularly favoured by the blackbirds. But I think they do also go for the red ones - just a bit later on. Perhaps there is a pecking order of colour preferences. I have a very small red berried one outside my greenhouse so I shall look at it with new interest now to see when it gets eaten compared to the orange one in the corner.

I think some pyracantha berries take much longer to ripen than others - although they may look ripe to human eyes. We used to have two different pyracanthas with red berries, one lot was always eaten very quickly, the other hung till much later in the year. So I don't think it's necessarily their colour but their maturity and juiciness the birds go for.

Hi Monika,
It appears that I have a completely different set of birds here because I have umpteen Red Pyracantha and the berries are gobbled up very quickly and a few Orange Pyracantha that the birds simply ignore and even after last years harsh winter there were berries left in the spring.
How odd! Totally unexplainable!
JB.

After all the apparent discrepancies listed above, I wonder whether local birds teach their offfspring different things and they then follow that on in the next generations? So that Primrose's local birds always go for the orange berries and Johnboy's always for the red ones? I do know that chaffinches apparently have local variations in song which are inherited/taught from generation to generation, so why not food preferences?

Hi Monica, in answer to your question yes apparently ducks learn to quack in regional accents, and its a similar difference to humans slower cornish
softly spoken drawl and the louder cockney accent.

I always thought that birds were attracted to red first - I know they sell yellow berried pyracantha and say that is less likely to be browsed - must admit though I grow shrubs with berries for the birds.

Hi Glallotments,
My Orange Berried Pyracantha are sports from a Red Pyracantha as to my knowledge I have never purchased any Orange Pyracantha or produced any knowingly.
Those that I have were produced when the nursery was in being.
At that time Orange Berried Varieties were not very popular because of the reason you give so I never went in for them. I still have my collection of mother shrubs but there is no Orange ones.
I just planted half a dozen that were surplus to requirements on a particular order.
JB.