Subject: [Tweeters] birds and toxic berries
Date: Dec 8 20:54:29 2006
From: Jeff Kozma - jkozma at charter.net


Similarly, I have watched Northern Cardinals eat the berries of climbing
nightshade back east and were seemingly unaffected.

Jeff Kozma
Yakima


----- Original Message -----
From: "mike denny" <m.denny at charter.net>
To: "AMY DAVID SHUMANN" <daccshumann at msn.com>; <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] birds and toxic berries


> Hello All,
> On 7 November 2004 while birding with John Gatchet below McNary Dam on the
> Columbia River. We watched as two tan-striped White-throated Sparrows fed
> on the beautiful eye catching red-orange fruits/berries of the Climbing
> Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara). These sparrows fed on 5-7 berries each,
> smashing the soft red flesh and consuming the seeds with seeming impunity.
> This plant and all of its parts are poison and contain compounds such as
> solanine, glycoside,dulcamarine to name a few. So we marveled at how these
> two small bodied birds could ingest these toxins and then fly off
> unaffected? See Oregon Birds 31(3):117.
> Later Mike
>
> ********************************************************************
> Mike & MerryLynn Denny
> 1354 S. E. Central Ave.
> College Place, WA 99324
> 509.529.0080 (h)
>
> IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN BIRDING, YOU HAVEN'T LIVED!
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