It’s a crisp fall day. Most of the leaves are gone, and for American robins in the Adirondacks, most of the fruits that might incline them to linger before flying South are gone, too. But then a robin spies a patch of winterberry, a kind of holly. Winterberry’s name derives from the fact, perhaps dubious, that birds and other wild things show so little interest in its fruits that the fruits hang on into winter.

To eat, or not to eat? The robin above seems to pause for a moment to ponder a winterberry’s appeal. It hasn’t read the book that says birds don’t like to eat them.

So the robin grabs a fruit and takes a millisecond to ponder. Winterberries are hollies, and holly fruits are poisonous to humans, so maybe the robin is wise to consider its next move.

Down goes the fruit.

Another? Yes, why not?

Down goes another, and another, and another. The only frugivores eating winterberries along the Saranac River at a faster clip these days are black bears. I don’t see the big omnivorous carnivores do it. As far as I can tell, the bears seem to gorge at night. But mornings, I find large and surprisingly tidy piles of bear scats, scats full of winterberry seeds and winterberries in various stages of digestion, on the damp ground under the bushes.

Robins feeding robins attract other robins. So it goes in the winterberry patch. What to do after you’ve wolfed down all the fruit a hungry bird can reasonably swallow? Perhaps you sit in a bush and look handsome and relish your good fortune.