"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

A proverb which generally translates "It is it is better to have something less abundant and definite than something highly abundant, but speculative."

The proverb openly uses the metaphors involving different quantities of birds in two different settings with differing degrees of obtainability. It is understood that these are the main variables into which one interjects the choices (birds) they have, and the risks (hand vs. bush) involved. However, it is also common to use the proverb in a qualitative analysis, the one bird representing either a single item or a group of items of lesser value or lower quality, but more definite, and the two birds representing another option with greater value or higher quality, but less certain.

The proverb is usually applied to financial and vocational choices, and in its ability to warn others from straying from the familiar, it parallels the saying "The grass is always greener on the other side."

Applications

Investment Decisions

In a business sense, this can be used to advise caution where highly-risky, yet otherwise highly profitable, investments are under consideration.

For example, it is well known that investors are risk-averse: Given the opportunity to buy a new investment which has a 50% chance of returning twice the return on an existing investment the average investor will always keep the existing investment (in the example, each investment has the same average rate of return). However, investors will even keep "safe" investments when a riskier investment would on average return a greater profit.

Ironically, investors will often neglect probability analyses for lowest risk/highest returns. They will take their chances of getting something more speculatively than they will getting something less as a sure thing.

At the same time, people exhibit a herd mentality: If everyone else is buying a stock, then it must be a good buy. If everyone else is selling a stock it must be a bad stock. Contrarian investment strategies argue, that all other things being equal (a major caveat in itself), one should buy when all others are selling, and sell when all others are buying.

The combination of these two observations - the aversity of the average investor to risk and the tendency to assume that the future will be like the past -- explains why most investors do not profit as much as they could from stocks and would really be better off investing in mutual funds a relatively safe investment with a better rate of return than bonds (one of the safest of investments ). Risk and potential reward are correlated (risky investments to attract capital must promise better return; safe investments are not under this pressure). The proverb reflects this -- and also the aversity to risk that most humans display. The two birds are of course objectively worth almost twice as much as the bird one has -- if you can catch them, that is. Hence, the proverb can be seen to reinforce the risk-averse tendency many persons share.

Relationship Choices

While the proverb could be extended to relationship choices, it is usually cumbersome to do so, in that it would only come up as a choice when one is forced to choose between two people in a relationship role that is highly exclusive, such as a romantic one. As such, a friend deciding between their current significant other and a new candidate might easily get lost in the illustration if you were to cite this proverb, and take the quantitative options somewhat literally, thinking your advice to them is to form exclusive relationships with both persons. If you had intended to focus on the risk-evaluation, the proverb "the grass is always greener on the other side" may have been more apt.

Vocational Choices

As mentioned above, the proverb can be used qualitatively to assess different options. For example, a person considering a career move may not be considering one job vs. two jobs' or one career vs. two careers', but the proverb may still be applied to consider the potential pitfalls of jumping into a new job or career, as opposed to staying with the "tried and true".