By breakfast the linden on the square had a new kind of knock. The woodpeckers had been issued tiny door knockers, no larger than a button, and they tried them on the birdhouse first.
We asked at the seed kiosk. "It used to startle the tea," said a woman with a paper bag of millet. "Now they tap once, wait for the leaf to nod, and only then say good morning. My geranium stopped flinching."
The park keeper pinned a note to the trunk: visitors may listen, but please do not answer unless the knock was meant for you. By the next day a sparrow had borrowed a knocker and returned it with a thank-you crumb.