I was recently told about a family of cranes that were still hanging around a nearby town in late November– weeks after the last of their kind should have left Finland, and facing an oncoming winter that I’m sure would spell their doom. It seems that one of the parent birds was injured and unable to fly, and the other two (parent and young) refused to abandon it.
It’s not the first such story I’ve heard, but this one has been playing on my mind for several days now. I have to wonder how concern and caring for a “loved one” can overcome the powerful drive to migrate south to safety. We all too often think of self-preservation as the most basic of all instincts, and the “kill or be killed” and “survival at all costs” as credos throughout the natural world – but maybe compassion is much more basic and instinctual than we realize.
In a world where we are inundated daily with news of war, greed and hatred, I like to think that these are not really the stuff of basic human nature. There might be hope for our species yet … even if I have to look to a family of cranes to find it.