There’s an idea that famous cryptid The Jersey Devil can be explained by the sighting of a lone crane in the forest. Sometimes it is depicted as a bird-like thing with the head of a horse. I believe it’s a coincidence that the young of cranes are called “colts,” but it’s a fun coincidence. Unlike the other leggy-and-necky birds known as herons and egrets, baby cranes are cute as hell. I love them. I also love hideous freak heron babies, but for different reasons.
Another cool mythical association: Cranes are the mortal enemies of pygmies. I do believe this myth has fuck-all to do with the various African tribes of short stature. The pygmies of Greek legend are mythological beings. In modern times we’re used to creatures like unicorns or centaurs existing as solitary units, discrete icons. These ones came with a built-in drama in the form an aeternal war with another type of mythological creature. Because waging war on pygmies is not something real birds do. That shit’s just weird. But funny.
I’ve only ever seen cranes when going out of my way to find them. They are not a part of my life at all. I went on a big birding road trip with my dad once and saw cranes in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. I didn’t remember with certainty which crane species they were and had to look them up. Based on range maps, this had to be the one: greater sandhill crane. I didn’t get a very good view. It was using binoculars to see them at a great distance; not too exciting. Greige beasts with a lil red bit.
But still. Big-ass birds are the closest thing we get to pterosaurs nowadays, and they are very cool. Cranes. Worth going out of your way for.
–
Once long ago my then wife and I went camping in the earl fall on a long road trip through Canada, heading for the Rockies. Stopped at a deserted campground on some lake in Saskatchewan, and I was walking on the shore – bare trees, bleak grey weather, etc., when a sandhill crane I hadn’t noticed took off right overhead. In any context they’re big. Up close they’re huge! I felt briefly as if I’d time traveled to the Jurassic, or whenever it was that pterosaurs flew. It really was like that.
I’m jealous, for sure. The closest I’ve been to truly large birds is in zoos, and it wasn’t all that close. I guess the ones that most impressed me were peacocks and a blue macaw. The macaw in particular looked like a damn axe. I don’t know what their bite strength is like, but easy to imagine them biting off chunks of hand or tearing out throats. Why aren’t there more killer parrots, nature? There are some. Keas / alpine parrots are known to -rarely- kill sheep in a terrible way.
I like your ‘big ass birds’. Only tangentially related (and really ‘big ass’) I was reading about the earthquake near San Diego. The video showed behavior that I’ve seen before when elephants feel threatened. They form a circle, tusks and trunks out, with the little ones inside. I always thought that showed they were probably more evolved toward being a decent society than humans.
elephants are cool. i’m glad they didn’t all go extinct back when mammoths did. i recently saw a nifty picture of one from a place where they roll in clay for sunscreen and it looked like a living marble statue.