On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:01:26 +0100, "David Hill"
wrote:

So they still remember how to do that do they.

Many, many years ago when I worked on the parks in Hastings we always had
pieces of wood about 12inches long pushed into the beds of polyanthus and
black cotton strung between them to form a confusing weave to keep the
sparrows off.

We always reckoned that they used them as part of their courtship ritual.

There's a photo in today's Leiden paper of a coot that has built a
nest around a fountain in the middle of a canal. The coot is sitting
on the nest with steady spray of water falling on it.

Whilst in UK last week, we observed a fight between a squirrel and two
magpies over ownership of the contents of a bird feeder. The magpies
won. We also saw a woodpecker using the bird feeder a few days later.