Kim Gaskill watches blue jays peck at bread crumbs one at a time while a raven grabs the whole piece and flies off. She uses it as a lesson: stop nibbling at opportunities. Take the whole thing.
It's a new day. I'm Kim Gaskill and this is the Daily Spark. I threw out some bread this morning. There's 4 pieces out there in the yard and man, almost immediately, like 6 blue jays came swooping down. Course, all of them go to the same slice of bread. They pick a little piece out and they fly up onto the branch of the tree, and then one of them will swoop down and jump down onto the ground, and all the other 3 or 4 will fly away. There's always a bully in the crowd, and they can't just all— there's plenty of room, but they can't all just sit around or stand around the one slice of bread and share. They could— there's definitely room. They could all pick off a little piece and not bother each other at all, but they won't. Only one will go down and eat at a time. The other ones sit up in the tree and wait, and as soon as that one picks off a piece and it flies up on a branch, then a different one will fly down. Now, I don't know if they coordinate that or if they've just learned that they can't all be eating the food source at the same time. Very— they're very, very aggressive bird. They don't let other birds eat at all. They will let other blue jays come down and take a turn, but they will always jump down and scare off other species of birds. And so I'm watching this for about 5 minutes, and then all of a sudden there's 3 pieces of bread, 3 slices of bread that are just sitting there, and they're not even touching them. And they're all the same, and they're all within about 12 inches of each other, but they all keep going to that same slice of bread. And then down swoops this huge raven, picks up an entire slice of bread and flies off into the tree, sits there on the branch, sets it down and pecks at it. One piece at a time, with a foot on the bread and a foot on the branch. He's got his whole meal up there. He doesn't have to fly down, keep fighting for little pieces. He's got the whole slice. And then I watch the blue jays and they go back to picking their little slice, their little piece, all of them on the same one. And it made me think, I want to be the raven. Because that dude just came down and got his whole meal in one swoop. Those blue jays, they're gonna be working for the next 20 minutes before that piece of bread is gone, doing one little piece at a time. So who are you? Are you the raven that seizes that opportunity, the whole thing, just swallow it up, take it, take what you want? Or do you exert energy after energy after energy, doing little piece by piece by piece, and exhaust yourself by the time you're done. Think about that today. I hope you are the Raven too. Join me again tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
