At the weekly Friend's of the Garden meeting here this week, one of the members was telling me that she had seen raccoons nibbling the fruit from her fuchsia. I told her that I eat them, but had never noticed any critters enjoying them. I have never even seen birds eating the fruit. I guess this probably occurs in my garden, but they probably come when I don't see them. We have a lot of non-native plants in the Garden. It seems to me that a lot of the fruit is not eaten. This year the squirrels seem to have developed a taste for kiwi fruit. I assume hungry critters will eat anything they can find, but wonder if they are preoccupied with the native plants they are used to. Blackberries grow everywhere and other than humans and maggots, nothing seems to be eating that fruit. I suppose birds eat them, but I have not really noticed.
For what it's worth, no critters - even birds - seem to eat the delicious native evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) in my garden. That's fine by me because, even now, there are some berries still left on the branches that have not shrivelled and are still tasty.
A lot of birds eat Fuchsia magellanica berries in Britain & Ireland, spreading the seeds to the extent that the plant has become widely invasive in milder areas (Cornwall, southern & western Ireland). Another South American shrub very popular with birds here is Berberis darwinii.
