Birds are at times very interesting to watch. 

I can sit on my deck at dusk or early in the morning and watch barn swallows that look like little black and orange jet fighters skim just above the weaving grasses in the field across the road. They are catching mosquitoes. They dart about zipping along and then quite suddenly will swing straight up into a slow roll and snap over and level off about thirty feet up in the air. Then, they  play a sort of a game of tag, chasing each other in a series of spins, loops and yes, even summersaults. They will keep this up until it gets dark or when the morning sun comes out. Their flying skills are unmatched by anything in the air. Only a humming bird can compete with them in aerial maneuvers but nothing in California can match the speed of a barn swallow.

My son built a feeding platform on top of an aluminum pole about ten feet high.  We keep the platform filled with assorted bird seeds. There usually are several dozen birds there. The other day the platform was devoid of seeds and no birds were to be seen. 

We quickly poured several pounds of seeds onto the platform and waited. 

There is a tiny wren that occasionally comes and struts about on the platform. We call him Napoleon because he looks exactly like a strutting miniature replica of that great general. At any rate he flew over and inspected the fresh pile of seeds and then flew off to the large oak tree out in our yard. 

We then heard a great deal of chirping and  suddenly in a burst of feathers and flapping wings Napoleon flew out of the tree with sparrows, blue jays, several doves,  ten or twenty finches and even a woodpecker all following right behind him over onto the feeding platform.

How Napoleon conveyed the fact that there were new seeds on our feeding platform to the different species of birds is a complete mystery to me.

But, he did!