Valentine for a Crane

'All cranes engage in dancing, which includes various behaviours such as bowing, jumping, running, stick or grass tossing, and wing flapping. Dancing can occur at any age and is commonly associated with courtship.' Wikipedia

How wonderful is this:

There is a remote village in Rajasthan, India, where the Jain monks feed millions of small cranes that migrate there every year. 

The village is called Khichan.  The annual bird migration began with about a hundred cranes in 1970s, when a local couple began feeding pigeons.  Other villagers joined in and by 2014 there are now over 20,000 demoiselle cranes that visit from August to March each year.


In the 1970s, Ratanlal Maloo, a native of Khichan who had been working in Odisha, returned to the village.  Since he did not have a lot of work, his uncle gave him the job of feeding the pigeons.  Being devout Jains, Ratanlal and his wife accepted the task.  Ratanlal would carry grain sacks to the feeding place, and his wife woul help him spread the grains on the ground.  A number of pigeons. sparrows and squirrels started coming to the place; peacocks also occasionally visited the place.  In September, a dozen demoiselle cranes also joined the other birds.  These birds had been seen visiting the farmlands of Khichan earlier.  During Sept-Feb, around 100 cranes came to the feeding place. During the next winter, around 150 cranes visited the place.  As the cranes grew in numbers, the local dogs started hunting them.  So, Ratan Lal asked the village panchayat to allot him some land on the outskirts of the village.  Some of the villagers joined him in building a chugga ghar ('bird feeding home') with a granary and a fence.

The villagers mend the birds broken wings, and repeatedly fill the squares with birdseed so that the cranes can 'take turns' landing in huge flocks and gorge themselves before making way for the next cohort.  Generations of cranes have passed on the memory and location of this oasis, and the most remarkable and wonderful thing about this event is that there seems to be nothing material in it for the villagers.  Purely for the good of their souls (which probably includes escaping from the endless cycle of karma).  I cannot imagine the equivalent happening in the west on this scale.

During migration from Mongolia and Eurasia, which is long and arduous (many perish due to hunger, fatigue and attack by predators) the cranes fly with their head and neck straight and their feet and legs straight behind them and attain heights of up to 8,000 metres.  The cranes fly into the chugga ghars, where they have a 90 minute breakfast.  They fly in small family flocks which come together to form enormous groups.  Around midday they assemble for a drink, followed by an occasional bath, and a second feed.  In 2008 it was estimated that up to 3,000 kilos of bird seed are consumed every day by the feeding birds (supported by tourist donations and charities).

I'd love to see these kinds of 'waystations' created all over the earth for migrating birds, especially since we have been responsible for changing the landscape so significantly that many of their usual resting places have vanished.  For this, I love India.  

So, three types of love on Valentine's day: the crane's love for its mate; human love for the cranes; and my love for anyone who does this sort of thing.