Mark 4:4

“And it happened that, as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside and the birds came and devoured it.”

In Palestine the fields were in narrow strips with pathways in between the strips, and these pathways would be hardened and trampled. They were rights of way (when the Apostles had walked through the cornfields in Mark 2:23 they had used such paths). As the sower took seed from his pouch and scattered it some would inevitably fall on such ground and be wasted, for there it could not take root and the birds were ever on the watch for such seed. The sight of them pecking away at the precious seed was a familiar one to His hearers. And as we have seen above it would be a reminder, to a people steeped in the Old Testament and later Jewish tradition, of the way in which birds could be seen as swooping down to seize the seed in a way that was reminiscent of the activities of the powers of evil and of demons, and even of Satan himself, especially in view of Jewish tradition where birds were commonly seen in that way (compare also Genesis 15:11; Genesis 40:17; Genesis 40:19; Isaiah 18:5; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 12:9; Ezekiel 39:4; Ezekiel 39:17). We can especially compare here Revelation 18:2, which echoes those traditions, where devils, unclean spirits and unclean birds are seen to be operating in parallel (compare Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:11; Isaiah 34:14).