Quite the party has been taking place in the juniper trees in my backyard for the past few weeks.

Scores of birds have been devouring the trees’ berries. Robins, Steller’s jays and other birds I can’t identify have filled the branches of the trees, squabbling and squawking over their feast.

I’m delighted that the birds have found such bounty in my backyard. I’m even more delighted that the Steller’s jays, for once, aren’t screeching their little bird lungs out and threatening my sanity with their obnoxiousness — they are stuffing their loudmouth beaks with juniper berries instead.

One thing I am not delighted about, however, is the mess the birds are making.

File this under “nature is gross,” along with spittle bugs and earwigs: I’ve spent the past few Saturdays cleaning up hunks of chewed-up juniper berries off my deck and every other horizontal surface in my backyard.

It seems that in their frenzy to pack away as many calories as possible before winter sets in, the birds in my trees have been rather sloppy eaters. My deck is littered with the masticated flesh of juniper berries and the seeds that are within them. One week it was so bad, I could barely see the deck boards through the mess of mashed-up berries and tree debris left behind by these hungry birds.

“A lot of animals are gearing up for winter, trying to eat as much of the best stuff they can,” said Rob Bingham, manager of the Sunriver Nature Center. Which means any food sources at this time of year are being ravaged. Robins, according to one report, can eat 220 juniper berries a day.

“The fruity part is what attracts the bird to it,” Bingham said of juniper berries. “The great thing about fruit is it’s a really great way to get their seeds spread about. The fruity part lures the animal in,” then the birds eat the fruit and distribute the seeds.

The seeds pass through the digestive tracts of birds, according to a U.S. Forest Service silviculture manual, and are deposited elsewhere to germinate.

I have no problem with this method of reproduction. Good for the junipers for developing such an efficient method of seed dissemination. And good for the birds for taking advantage of nature’s bounty!

However, I am sick to death of the mess they leave behind.

“It’s a war zone on fruit and seeds,” Bingham said. “It’s almost a frenzy.

“There is a certain sloppiness factor.”

That’s putting it mildly. These birds could make a mob of toddlers with finger paint look like neat freaks.

Gooey globs of resinous juniper pulp fall from my trees at regular intervals, speckling the deck, my patio chairs and everything else. On a few occasions, these chunks of mashed berry bits have fallen on my person, a fact I’d just as soon forget about, considering that the sticky paste I’ve scraped off my arm had recently been chewed up inside a bird’s mouth.

And forget about walking barefoot on the deck.

In addition to the mess of pre-chewed berries the birds leave behind, there’s also the rain of tree parts they instigate. Every time a bird moves through the branches, a deluge of needles, twigs and berries falls to the ground.

Which means the deck is also covered with whole berries, needle pieces and sticks. These subsequently are stepped on by the human and canine members of my household and tracked onto the living room carpet.

I think I give up. I concede. They aren’t my juniper trees; they belong to the birds. Well, have at ’em, my avian friends. I’ll be inside washing the sap off my shoes.