I'd been watching this little chickadee come and go for two weeks before I finally caught it singing — that clean two-note fee-bee, crown feathers up, on an empty feeder at 5:28 in the morning. It did not need the seed to come back. It just came.
Three visits in a row now, every one to a feeder I'd just cleaned and left empty. A bird that shows up for an empty table is a bird that has decided this is its place.