That slang word has even made it into our recorded language. Indeed birds are creatures driven by instinct. Scientists refer to this as their being hard wired. Their stereotyped lives fit into narrowly defined patterns from which they rarely stray.
Birds do learn, however.
Among the famous Darwin's finches of the Galapagos Islands is one species that learned to pry out insects with a stick, a rare example of tool using by non-humans. But my favorite example of bird learning was reported in the early 1950s by the English ornithologists James Fisher and R. A. Hinde in British Birds. In order to tell this story I provide some background for younger readers. Until those paper milk cartons that are used today were introduced shortly after World War II, milk was universally sold in glass bottles. And before milk delivery was curtailed and finally almost completely eliminated since then, those bottles of milk were delivered to home doorsteps or milkboxes by milkmen.