How do birds know what to do?

[MsD]

We put out a ton of bird feeder stuff and don't mind the squirrels (who have high-pitched warning cries if they see cats]

Squirrels are a bit like wedding guests shoving all the buffet into black bags and taking them away before other guests (closer to the happy couple) have had a chance to get so much as a cheese straw. If they just helped themselves to what they could reasonably eat, I’d have no problem with them.

[ursus arctos]

And yet the German word for such behaviour invokes Hamsters instead

[Various Artist]

I just love Erskine Bridges's glorious blow-by-blow account there. Oystercatchers nesting on the roof! Red squirrels on the windowsill! Greeny-yellow things in the garden! An excited Mrs EB in the bedroom! What's not to like?

[Sits]

The greeny yellow ones were Siskins, I reckon.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Our wood pigeon (well one of the pair). They've been busy.

[Sits]

MsD to thread.

[Snake Plissken]

Mrs P is in absolute delight, having discovered two pairs of nesting wrens in our hedges and spent ten minutes just sat as the parents and a fledgling took it in turns to look at her from close quarters.

There is also a goldfinch that is spending a lot of time in the garden and has an uncanny knack of knowing when precisely she doesn't have a camera to hand.