Cranes - a series of coincidences

In May 2009 I saw my daughter just after she had returned from her honeymoon. We talked about a lot of things but she briefly mentioned that a friend, Neil, and his wife had just had a baby girl. Neil was often at our house when the children were growing up but he now lived in Scotland and I had not seen him for about six years. My daughter, Wendy said she was going to buy the baby a mobile for above his cot. Two days later, I left for a city break in Copenhagen and filled three days with visits to Elsinore, Roskilde and the city. On the final day, I had an hour to kill before leaving and, on a whim, went to the Danish Design Museum shop in the centre. The shop had a whole wall devoted to mobiles of every imaginable type and subject - did the Danes invent the mobile? - and I decided to buy one for Wendy to send to the baby. I chose one of cranes - the bird - because a Chinese friend of mine once told me that they were a sign of long life. When I got home, I told my daughter but she said that, unable to find a mobile herself, she had sent something else. "Why don't you send it to Neil?" she said and gave me his address. I duly sent it. When Neil's thank you letter came, it was full of surprises. Not only was he working for the RSPB in Scotland but he had, a few years previously, made a special study of cranes and spent time in Spain - near Riglos - watching the cranes' migration over the mountains. Some months later, there was a BBC Radio short story competition and I decided to write up this coincidence as a story and submit it - unsuccessfully, as it turned out! But in writing it, I stopped halfway through for a break, made myself a cup of tea and turned on the television. It was about 7.15 pm on Monday 7th December. The 'One Show' came on and the first item was about cranes - and plans to reintroduce them to the West of England. En passant, I do have a second - briefer - coincidence. My mother and father died on the same date in November, but exactly 25 years apart.