Note to self 4.30.23 Fruit falling and pool empty

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 I have a large tree by my pool.  It makes a tiny fruit, that the Maya (and myself) like.  It's not very fruity, because it's so tiny.  But it has a soft shell on the outside that peels away easily, and then you pop it in your mouth, and suck the fruit off, and spit out the pit.  The Maya enjoy them more like a piece of candy than a piece of fruit.

In Maya it is called Huayum and I'm not sure what it is in Spanish.


I noticed about the first of March, I started getting tiny pieces in my pool that I'd have to clean out every couple of days.   5 or 6 or 7 pieces.   The birds like them and would fly into the tree, peck a little at them, and knock them off the tree into the pool.   Day by day, the quantity increased, I suppose as the fruit was getting mature and ripe.   Besides knocking them into the pool, they knocked many more to the ground. 

About 2 weeks ago, April 15th, there started to be forty or fifty pieces a day in the pool and it was getting filthy.   So I drained the pool and have left it empty for the past two weeks.   This is a photo of one of the branches today and you can still see a few pieces of fruit.  But 3 weeks ago there were hundreds in this same space.   Big clusters.   So apparently the end of April is the end of the season for the tree.


Next year, I just need to drain the pool for the month of April and make it easy to get in and sweep up the fruit rather than picking pieces all month every day.

Also interesting, on April 15th, I was sitting outside in the morning, having coffee, and it seemed to me like I was hearing many more bird calls, at the same time, than I usually heard.  All together, with BirdNET app, I was able to identify 14 different varieties of Yucatan birds in the yard all at once.   They came in waves into the tree to get some fruit to eat.  The Jays at first since they are the biggest.  They would eat and then fly to some other tree and some others would come, and then others.  But they all hung around the area for 3 or 4 hours.   This morning, with less fruit to pick from, I counted 9 varieties.









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