IS IT LOVE?
Rex Burress
If you have watched those nest-site videos of eagles feeding their tiny babies with their massive beaks, you'll marvel at how tenderly the parent offers a tidbit of meat to the gaping baby mouth.
Why do they show this apparent affection to a helpless blob? Is it love? They could otherwise be sailing through the glorious skies free of the considerable chore of providing food for those infants. What propels the compulsion for the complete reproductive process unto the birth of the offspring? Just what subterranean power dictates the growth of a seed, or the parental instinct for a bird to hatch an egg and care for the hatchling? Or the way various other animals provide for a birth? [They don't have to do it, do they?] If love is to show care, affection, and provide subsistence [often at great sacrifice and hardship] toward the life of their new-born, a bird's attentiveness must be something like love as humans call it.
Is the human love for their baby any different than that of a female alligator sheltering her hatched babies in her mouth [Yes, alligators lay eggs]? Or a rabbit suckling her helpless brood for a couple weeks in a hidden grass nest? But how about the stickleback fish where the male only engages a female to lay eggs in his nest and then chases her off, doing all the guarding and care work of a couple hundred babies?
What kind of love is it when the female scorpion carries her babies on her back, and if one falls off, she tenderly puts it back on with her pinchers—or eats it if she's hungry! How tedious is the mating of the black widow spider when the big black female eats the small male after he gives her love sperm... if she can catch him!
What turned me on to this subject, was a scrub jay outside my office window at the faint light of dawn, urgently searching for an insect in the grass. There was no doubt that her early appearance was due to a nest full of babies eager for food somewhere out in the olive orchard.
She watched the ground from 30 feet away on the clothesline, and it was amazing how she would cock one eye toward the grassy jungle, and spot a bug that I probably couldn't see from inches away. There was no hesitation as she pounced on the prey and then flew in a straight line back to the orchard. Within a minute, she was back for more! This goes on all day for a couple weeks!
Is it any less a sign of devotion to see a human couple contend with a nine-month pregnancy, and then be responsible for the child's growth for years? There's no working for worms as in the jay's case, but there's plenty of work going to the grocery store for baby food, and a certain work in the mother providing breast-milk and avoiding the pitfalls of milk contamination. Through it all, there is the overriding display of cuddling care and playing with the baby, something birds lack since it's hard to hug without arms. Yet, there's enough of something to pull them through. Some call it love, and others might call it survival.
In every species, you see this family togetherness, especially in spring when baby animals proliferate the countryside. You realize the growth season has arrived if you work at a nature center or an animal rehabilitation center when you are besieged by 'lost' babies. Drama after drama: Ducklings in the gutter, ducklings on the rooftop, a nest of ducklings on the sailboat balcony [Lake Merritt], floundering fledglings, an overrun of possums, a swarm of bees—every living thing is involved in love and re-creation!
What is love? It's becoming obvious that there are different degrees and forms of love. The transference of familiarity is one such condition. Cowbirds. Those who make 'pets' out of wild animals know this attraction, but it's best to leave 'wild' wild. I was straddled once in caring for a fawn deer, and when I took it back to the forest, it would follow me around like a dog. Good for photography, but not good for wild instincts.
I found love recently in the Chase Bank parking lot! I found a stone painted with “love” back in the bushes, and some unknown person had thus expressed love and left it for the lover to find! You know that must be a human characteristic unknown to jays and deer, but who am I to say? Some might call it defacing rocks!
"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”--Van Gogh
“If the bird has not preached to me, it has added to the resources of my life. It has afforded me another beautiful object to love, and has helped me to feel more at home in this world.”--John Burroughs
“He prayeth best who loveth best/ All things both great and small:/ For the dear God who loveth us, /He made and loveth all.”--Samuel Coleridge