Recently, I’ve been eating blackberries and Worcesterberries every other day for breakfast. I love these relatively sour berries which extend the berry season right up to the first heavy frosts, normally in November!
Worcesterberry is a selection of the North American coastal black gooseberry (Ribes divaricatum)
It’s been a good year for blackberries. I picked the last ones on Saturday. There are many unripe as usual, but it’s too late now for them to ripen. This is from a bush we were given by Scottish friends who lived in Trondheim in the 80s. They had brought the plant with them from Scotland. It grows on the south facing wall of my house. It isn’t hardy and has to be layed on the ground and covered with leaves / spruce branches….not a pleasant job as it’s a thorny variety!
The ever-changing view, friday was windy and this morning’s surprise whiteness…the first of the autumn, No panci at getting up the carrots, parsnip and perennials for forcing as it’s unlikely to freeze for a while!
I’ve grown burdock on the balcony this year, the favourite wild winter food of goldfinches (stillits) and greenfinches (grønnfink). I can then watch them feeding from my desk :)
Real golpar is the ground seed of Heracleum persicum (Tromsøpalme), an important spice in Iran. I use a mix of wild and cultivated species of Heracleum (hogweeds): H. sibiricum, H. maximum, H. sphondylium…and naturalised H. persicum
Most of the thrushes were gone today, replaced by a flock of about 120 waxwings (sidensvans), picking up from where the thrushes left off!
The first two videos show waxwings eating apples opened up by fieldfares and blackbirds yesterday and also eating guelder rose (krossved) berries, so far not touching the elderberries (svarthyll).
Earlier in the day, the waxwings were hunting insects on birch trees and occasionally high into the air in pursuit of insects:
…and the morning after, they had discovered the yew berries!
…and on unharvested redcurrants (rips)….with a fieldfare (gråtrost) and brambling (bjørkefink) at the end of the video!
I didn’t see what happened here until I replayed the video. A Siberian nutcracker (nøttekråke) at the top of a spruce tree must have had a hazel nut in its pouch, brings it up, juggles with it in its bill before pouching it again!
This week, somewhere in Trøndelag, we stumbled on a large number of chantarelles (kantarell). The aim of the trip was to pick winter chantarelles (traktkantarell) for drying. Imagine our surprise to find a huge number of chantarelles. I’ve never found so many so late in the year! There were many winter chantarelles too, but we decided to pick them next week!
Walking up a very steep slope and suddenly this was the view in front of us:
The final haul ready to dry!
Unusually large numbers of thrushes, mainly fieldfare (gråtrost), redwings (rødvingetrost) and a few blackbirds (svarttrost) in the garden at the moment, mainly on the rowans (wild and planted for the birds) and apples (need to harvest earlier than normal this year).
This year is a bumper year for rowans near the fjord, but poor a little inland due probably to frosts which didn’t affect us! Late frost at the time of fruit flowering iis very unusual where I am near the fjord (due to a combination of warmth from the fjord and the fact that there isn’t night at this time!). This has concentrated thrushes near the fjord where the food is!
2. Redwing and fieldfares on rowan
3. Fieldfare on rowan (this tree was more or less stripped of berries during the day)