May 27th 2023

Life lessons from starlings 

Earlier this week I noticed a starling standing in the grass with his mouth open. It seemed a little odd and initially I wondered if he was panting, but it didn’t seem hot enough for that. So then I concluded perhaps he was sick and just wrote it off as a random oddity. A few days later we were disking a field with the horses. Whenever we turn soil, various birds (but especially starlings) tend to be my constant companions. They comb through the freshly turned earth and pack their tiny beaks to the brim with grubs and insects. I was resting the horses and watching the starlings and they were all walking around with their beaks wide open, just like the bird I’d seen a few days prior, and it dawned on me that there was nothing wrong with the bird I’d seen. These tiny predators were simply ready to strike and couldn’t afford even a moments hesitation. There have been times in my life that I had to prepare myself, sometimes without even knowing exactly what would come next. Sometimes it looks a little ridiculous to be a bird standing in a field with your beak wide open, but if you want to be the one who nabs three worms instead of one then sometimes you have to do things that don’t make sense. Sometimes you have to position yourself for something, and comb through the soil just believing that some good will come of it. Sometimes just a moments hesitation can make all the difference. I would venture to say, in most things in life I hesitate. I’m fairly slow to change. But there have been just a couple of times in life where I’ve been in exactly the right place and I’ve jumped without much forethought and it has made all the difference. I have no idea what’s on the horizon for each of you, or if you are approaching some decision or transition, but I can assure you that if you go about life like a little bird with its beak wide open you’ll catch a lot more worms than anyone else.