Do Early Birds Catch Worms?
By Ralph Incher-Smith
Department of Proverbial Renunciation, Canterbury, Kent.
I compared the feeding rates of my young son with those of common garden birds to test the hypothesis that early birds catch the worm. I conclude that birds do get up early but mainly out of spite, not the desire to catch worms.
Introduction
During spring, and for a good few months, birds show off about how early they can get up by sitting directly outside my window and making a god-awful racket.
Since it seems that my chances of getting a lie-in past 5am during that time disappear completely, I decided to spend my time usefully. If you can’t beat them (and I have tried, with a variety of implements) you have to join them.
This current study set about attempting to ascertain whether the early bird does indeed catch worms at a faster rate than more leisurely specimens.
Methods
Worm numbers were counted using a new piece of apparatus called a Ground Ultrasonic Booster, which emits seismic pulses that hit the worms (harmlessly) and are reflected back to the machine producing a perfect picture of where worms are located underground.
Figure 1 illustrates typical recording from this GRUB machine taken at 1 minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes after first insertion into the ground.