Ripe Figs

While I was gone the figs on the tree out front got ripe. They have been the object of interest of the scrub-jays and squirrels, but this morning I saw the tail end of what I thought was a Nuttall’s woodpecker. It came back and turned out to have been a female black-headed grosbeak.

We had a fig tree out front when we lived at the Trout Club in Santa Barbara nearly 30 years ago; a grosbeak would visit it regularly when the figs were ripe. Numenius once made a fantastic sketch of one with fig detritus all over its beak; I wasn’t able to put my hands on this sketch today. I did try to capture the bird this morning (apologies for haste, I was also on the phone at the time) but afterwards also found evidence of its work, shown below.