survival of the fittest

Our cranes are still molting. It feels a little late as I believe they will be migrating soon. I trust they know what they are doing . They have been around a whole lot longer than we have. Here is what wiki says:

Sandhill cranes have one of the longest fossil histories of any extant bird. A 10-million-year-old crane fossil from Nebraska is said to be of this species, but this may be from a prehistoric relative or ancestor of sandhill cranes. The oldest unequivocal sandhill crane fossil is 2.5 million years old, older by half than the earliest remains of most living species of birds, primarily found from after the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary some 1.8 million years ago.

two sandhill crane feathers (Antigone canadensis)