Birds and watching them

Bird names are the part of German that a dictionary helps least with: die Amsel and die Meise are ordinary garden birds here and have no everyday English equivalent that carries the same familiarity. They are worth learning because they turn up in weather talk, in children’s books and on every nature programme. Note that a bird’s call has its own verb — zwitschern for small birds, and German does not simply say singen for all of them.