Transcontinental mourning dove recovery

A Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) banded in New York has been reported shot in California. On 25 August 1969, near Palmyra (43°00' N, 77°10' W), New York Department of Environmental Conservation personnel placed U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service band 883-97279 on the leg of a hatching-year Mourning Dove of unknown sex. During the first weekend of the dove season in September 1970, Stan Solus (P.O. Box 594, Seiad Valley, California) recovered the band from a dove he shot in the Shasta Valley, Siskiyou County, California (41°30' N, 122°20' W). As Mr. Solus included the band with his reporting letter and, in response to my asking him for verification, reaffirmed his original information, the recovery has been accepted as authentic.

I suggest this vagrancy may be explained by assuming that the inexperienced New York bird got emotionally involved with a western bird with which it shared winter quarters, perhaps in Mexico, and thus the following year ended up a flower child in California.