We have a number of olive trees here at Buckskin Mountain State Park. This seems to be an unusually good year for olives, the trees are loaded with ripe olives. I’ve seen a large number of small birds, in the trees, and I assumed they were feeding on bugs. Yesterday after watching a House Finch closely I realized they were actually feeding on the olives. They don’t have to be large enough to eat the olive whole; they simply peck a hole through the skin to get at the pulp. Shown here is a Verdin, a tiny bird of some four inches, eating away on an olive. Not only are the House Finches and Verdins busy feeding in the trees, I’ve seen Gambel’s Quail dashing about to snag olives on the ground.
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