Why is the Crane on a Starry Field?

Though those of my lineage have no heraldic arms, I have taken as a personal emblem a crane on starry azure field, with a chief charged with three golden dragon flies. As a motto, I have adopted, Humilitatem Initium Sapientiae. A phoenix gold and red crest with gold and black mantling support the shield.

The crane was adopted as the central figure of my emblem because of its rich symbolism and because, simply, my Slovak surname translates into crane. The crane was placed on a starry field because I so oft look up in wonderment into the night skies. Indeed, I recall with regularity the beauty of the words from a small little text called the Christianica, which I was given decades ago by Father Richard for serving as a catechist at St. John Catholic Church in Albion, Michigan. In particular, I remember the following lines (a most felicitous juxtaposition of some verses from Psalms and Genesis) that have a particular resonance with me:

Lord, when I look at thy heavens, the work of they fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established;/what is man that thou are mindful of him?/ Yet thou has made him little less than the angels and given him dominion over the works of they hands;/ thou has put all things under his feet.

Wonderment at the cosmos. Humility at our place in the cosmos.

I was further moved to place the crane on a starry sky when I read the Fable of The Crane and the Peacock by Avianus. Here is the full translation of the fable:

The story goes that Juno’s bird disparaged the Thracian fowl, when she shared their joint feeding ground.  For a quarrel had arisen involving their different kinds of beauty and they were protracting a long argument on a case easy to settle.  The peacock contended that the parts of his body gleamed in manifold loveliness, but that a dingy back gave the crane a dun colour, and at the word he arrayed about him the canopy of his uplifted tail and shot an arc of light upwards to the sky.  The crane, though unable to rival the other in any glory of plumage, is nevertheless said to have used these words in mockery: “Countless may be the array of colours variegating your plumage, yet you, the wearer of the gaudy tail, are for ever kept close to earth.  But I soar aloft into the air on my wing for all its ugliness, and am wafted nigh to the stars and heavenly powers.”

Avianus, Hadrian, Florus, Nemesianus, Reposianus, Tiberianus, Phoenix, Rutilius Namatianus. Minor Latin Poets, Volume II: Florus. Hadrian. Nemesianus. Reposianus. Tiberianus. Dicta Catonis. Phoenix. Avianus. Rutilius Namatianus. Others. Translated by J. Wight Duff, Arnold M. Duff. Loeb Classical Library 434. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934, p. 705.