The black hawthorn berries are ripening, and some of my feathered friends are there to start gobbling them up. I sat in the shade nearby for about an hour and saw cedar waxwings, robins, chickadees, and a scrub jay. The robins and cedar waxwings ate them whole. The chickadees would hang onto the cluster and eat them. The scrub jay plucked the berry and flew off with it to eat it elsewhere.
The black hawthorn is in the rose family and the berries are edible. I tried one, and it reminded me of eating a rose hip or a mealy apple. There were 4 seeds inside that were most of the berry. There was only a little fleshy part surrounding the seeds. Maybe they are not quite ready to eat. Birds tend to eat certain berries before they have fully ripened.