R.I.Chalmers Passionate About English

There’s an old saying that the early bird catches the worm, which must make it equally true that the early worm gets caught by the bird.

A week or so ago I was sitting with my wife in a bar enjoying some  tapas near our home in Seville. Despite the sunshine and warmth, it is nevertheless winter and I suppose food for the animals and birds is at a premium. As we were eating in the open, there were many sparrows waiting to pick up scraps that fell from the tables. My wife, being the kind hearted animal lover that she is, was throwing scraps of food to the sparrows. 

I noticed that some of the sparrows were very quick in coming forward to seize the scraps and fly off with them to eat. Some of the birds, however, seemed more reluctant and hung back while the other birds took the first crumbs. The action of the first birds reminded me of the old saying, about the early bird catching the worm, until that is my wife ran out of scraps. The first scraps she had thrown were those that she herself would not have eaten and which would have been thrown away regardless. When she ran out of those, however, she noticed that the birds that had waited had not been fed. Taking pity on them, she began throwing them some of the food from the plate that she might have eaten herself, and that would not be considered scraps. The birds that waited, therefore, received the choicest food from the table.

I wondered if the birds who had waited had perhaps learned to do so in order to get the best of the food. Could such a small creature, I wondered, have figured out that human nature, being what it is, would seek to ensure that all the birds were fed, but might take special pity on those birds that appeared to be weaker and more vulnerable than their more outgoing peers? If this were the case, the old adage that the early bird catches the worm should perhaps be revised.

Perhaps a more fitting saying would be that the early bird catches the crumbs, but the bird that bides its time gets the fullest stomach.

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