Before you read too far into this installment of my blog. Noooo, nobody needed rescuing from this hike. In fact, it turned out to be a very short hike due to both me and my partner being SO out of form. There was a rescue though…of a wildlife kind.
Its been a couple years since I’ve been up into the hiking trails beyond the Palm Springs Tramway. I can’t go up very often due to the price of their seasonal passes climbing every year. So now, if I’m lucky, its once a year. I chose this month to escape the extreme heat of the desert floor – if only for a few hours – and also I needed to spread some of my cat’s ashes (Miss Kitty).
Once we arrived at the mountain station, we wound our way down the steep switchbacks to the hiking trail and decide to try to grab a geocache behind the ranger station area. (This is away from the Notch loop trail where I have a few hides of my own.) I found the cache and was on my way back down the side of a hill when I had to slam on the proverbial brakes before I stomped on a small bird on the ground.
The poor thing wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t moving much either. It fluttered a bit as I almost stepped on it, but that was about it. Tami came up to see what I was screeching about and couldn’t get it to move either. At this point we thought that either we leave it there to probably die or somehow get it to the ranger station which wasn’t far away. It wasn’t a baby, so no fear of the mother abandoning it, but something was definitely wrong with it.
Tami took the extra long sleeve shirt she had brought with her and carefully wrapped it around the bird and scooped it up.
At first we thought it was a juvenile bluebird, but later after we did research, we think it was actually a Red-breasted Nuthatch. Neither of us are an Ornithologist, so who really knows!
When we walked into the ranger station with the birds, they probably thought we were crazy people looking for a local wildlife pet. lol Not so – we just wanted to make sure it would live as long as it wasn’t diseased. Nothing looked wrong other than it wasn’t moving a ton and also wasn’t fighting us as we carried it.
Being good sports, the rangers brought us to the back porch and had us put down the bird onto a towel. It shook its head a bit, fluttered and sat there for a few moments…then apparently it decided it had enough of us crazy humans and pipped away a foot. We gasped in happy surprise! Then, it actually flew off 20 feet and settled on a bench deciding it was absolutely done with us crazy people. We all cheered.
Yes, six full grown humans cheering a juvenile bird flying 20 feet away from us.
The rangers figured that it probably had flown into a tree or rock and stunned the bejeebers out of itself until me and my clumsy self nearly trod on it. I’m thankful I was looking down watching the ground as I walked!
Hiked a bit more after that, but not too much. No more wildlife rescues either. Whew!
PS Those of you who follow my twitter (@L_Michele_Scott) may recognize the bridge above. Same one, different angle, with a cute woman hiking on it. 😉
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