THE fruit is ripe on the yew trees. The pink berries glow mysteriously among the dark green foliage. They are shaped like tiny mugs, with an opening at one end. The soft pink flesh of the berries is edible, and tastes sweet, but the seeds inside are poisonous, as are the leaves of the tree. Song thrushes and blackbirds are now feeding on the berries, and flocks of greenfinches come down to take them, but the birds only digest the flesh and the seeds pass through them.
On blackthorn bushes there any many ripe sloes. They are coated with a blue bloom, and when they linger on the bare branches in winter, growing close together, they can be mistaken for a patch of blue sky showing through the bush. The juice in the sloes is very sour. In general, birds do not like them but they are occasionally eaten by blackbirds.
In ditches, there are bright orange clusters of berries growing on a short spike. These are the fruit of cuckoo-pint, or lords and ladies. Pheasants peck at them, and slugs eat them, but they are poisonous to man.
DJM