It's a good year for mulberries along the Colorado Front Range. Indeed, the mulberry trees on our Littleton farm are loaded with fruit, attracting a wide variety of wildlife.
American robins and house finches are the primary consumers, clogging the trees for most of the day; less common visitors include cedar waxwings, Bullock's orioles, spotted towhees and gray catbirds and wandering opportunists such as magpies and starlings. Raccoons and skunks feed on fallen fruit as do red fox and coyotes that hunt on the farm. While the red fruit on the weeping mulberry is sweet, we humans are not generally fond of the tart, white mulberries on the larger trees.
Of course, there is a drawback to this mulberry bonanza. Two of the trees sit close to the house and, unfortunately, near the two entrance doors. Despite the best efforts of our avian residents, most of the fruit ends up on the ground, on the roof and in the gutters; those that litter the entrance walkways are most problematic, requiring regular cleanup to keep squashed mulberries off the soles of our shoes and out of the house.
