Bird Damage in Droughts

This is what bird damage on citrus looks like. It isn't pretty, it isn't good for the fruit, but it is in no way meant in malice. After our late April flood Houston went into severe drought. Now I am not talking about Austin or San Antonio severe, but Houston severe. For a city who regularly gets 42 inches of rain per year to go 7 weeks with absolutely no rain (that was just my house, some areas went longer,) is severe. Our local flora and fauna have acclimatized themselves to the excessive rain and often survive flooding that would devastate other ecosystems' plant and animal life. But at times it is drought that we are less prepared to deal with.

This citrus was pecked at by birds; I know this because I saw them. Observation is one of the more critical components of permaculture. If I had not seen birds do this I might not have known. I might have had to look it up in a book. For the past few years I have seen birds do this to my persimmons, the idea is to create just enough damage to the fruit that it begins to ripen. It works very well with persimmons and if you leave the fruit on the tree you will see birds eat the ripened portion, leave, and return a day or so later after the surrounding area has also ripened. Eventually they do finish the fruit. The whole process is kind of ingenious and if we just watched them for awhile we would notice that birds are often less wasteful with our fruit than we think.

I suspect the damage to my citrus was something the birds did in desperate hope that the citrus would begin to ripen and they could drink the juice. At the very least the area would start to rot and give them access to the pulp. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, no such thing happened. The fruit stayed intact and hopefully begins to ripen in October. As to what the inside might look like I have no idea. I will post a report once the fruit begins to ripen.