Iím relaxing looking at a bird feeder. Can you imagine anything less exciting to be doing on a beautiful warm June afternoon? I must live a boring life because I was thoroughly enjoying watching a plump quail pecking at the earth just beneath the feeder. Heís a busy little guy darting side to side and to and fro in pursuit of fallen seeds. Iím finding myself searching around, for it appears by the way this chubby grey bird is frantically feeding that he is in competition with another unseen fowl.
Gazing up I started eyeing the birds that were standing on the little pegs branching out from a clear plastic cylinder full of seeds. There were several little sparrows jabbing their peaks into the pile of seeds spread around the base of the tube. In their rush to fill their tiny tummies they were knocking seeds off the ledge of the feeder, much to the delight of that singular quail and his invisible competitor.
Studying their actions got me to thinking. Why were these birds so inefficient at eating? Wouldnít you think in all the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution they would have been more effective at not knocking their food of their dinner plate? Or if you wish in the creation of these fellows, a smart brain would have made them eat everything on their plate. Right? But No! Despite a millennium of development and or heavenly intervention these small brownish songbirds were plain sloppy!
Following the seeds dropping down to earth it came to me that quails arenít great fliers besides even if they were this little guy would never have been able to sit on that peg. His butt is simply too big. So heís more than willing to clean up after the smaller more nimble, messy birds above.
It began to dawn on me I was assessing this all wrong. I was taking a very microscopic view of how nature feeds its members. From the perspective of only looking at the feeding habits of the sparrow and how it pertained to his survival I was missing the need of the existence of intertwined lives. It was only when I stepped back and broadened my awareness was I able to see how efficient the feeding cycle really is.
Edited by earlybird (06/25/10 07:30 PM)
Balanced (My goal)
There is symmetry