Some birds fly and some don’t, like the Tom Turkey I snapped in Zion National Park. Unlike the terrestrial bound turkey, many flying birds are monogamous in that they mate for life; a fact even more incredible when you consider birds like the osprey. These birds migrate solo, flying thousands of miles alone, yet  always return to the same nesting grounds year after year, to reunite with their mate.

It’s easy to put a romantic human spin on this behavior. After all, such dedication is rarely found in our own species! It seems epic to us and rightly so. But is there ’emotion’ involved in any of it? Or is this just a pragmatic evolutionary strategy driven on some cellular level? Science will give you one answer, fair enough.  On the other hand, the idea of animals having an emotional reality doesn’t seem at all far-fetched to me. If you’ve had animals in your life, you know this. 

So, who knows what drives such fealty? Biochemical signals? Love? As Mercutio said, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’