Who needs days off? For the last two days I’ve been banding in King’s Canyon National Park just southeast of Yosemite. We are on our four days off right now, but I decided to go with Jeff and Jessica to band some sites down here. The accommodations are really nice; we have beds, shower access, a kitchen and everything. Best of all, its warm at night. During the day it has been hot and dry. The sites are wonderful.
Today we banded Lion’s Meadow which is isolated in a grove of Giant Sequoia. When I was on the net run I scared a female Mallard into the bottom pocket of one of our nets. She was much too big for the 30mm net so she wasn’t tangled very badly. After I extracted her, she sat there in the grass for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if she was okay. Right after I got a picture she flew off. We don’t band ducks, but because I actually extracted her, she got recorded on our unbanded sheet.
Alan got a Rufous Hummingbird from net four, but because I was on the other part of the net run, I missed it. I feel so sad. I’ve always wanted to see one. There was a vagrant in North Carolina at someone’s feeder a few years ago, and people came from several states around to see it. They are more common here, but my window for seeing one is dwindling as their migration to Canada is ending. This one must have been extremely late, or it could have already bred and have been on its way south.
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