Birds and baseball II

I made this original post about birds and baseball in mid-May after seeing an American Kestrel spending time at Target Field in Minnesota. The Twins have been on the road a lot since that entry, and when I have watched a couple home games, I have not seen the falcon. However, there were two more bird-on-the-field incidents in other Major League Baseball games. A couple weeks, ago the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were in Arlington, Texas, to play the Rangers. While some sharp local baseball fans might be able to recognize former New York Yankee Hideki Matsui batting in the picture below, can you find and identify the bird?



Go ahead and give it a shot! If you have not found it the bird is located between the batter and the catcher, just in front of the X on the right Lexus advertisement. Now have you identified it? The Rangers announcers noted it walking around, as it did for a prolonged period during this at bat, making its way towards the Rangers dugout. They called it a "pigeon". It is actually a Mourning Dove, as you can see in the next photo.



I do give them credit for paying attention to their visitor. They were also quite right in saying how the area in front of the dugout is a good place for some birds (apart from that being hit by a baseball thing) with all of the sunflower seeds the players eat. This dove may well have been picking through those seeds. Hopefully it found more than just discarded hulls to snack on. The third picture, from a Milwaukee Brewers and Florida Marlins game a few days ago, does show a Rock Pigeon.



This was a home game for the Marlins, and they play in Miami. From what I heard no one even mentioned the pigeon on air. They showed film of it flying by while they posted the score going to commercial and nothing more. I sure do wish Florida, of all places, could have found a better bird to put on air. It is a city, but there had to be something at least native to America in the vicinity of the stadium. I guess they all cannot be as unique as the Western Kingbird in Kansas City.


Photo 1 and 2 via Fox Sports Southwest, photo 3 via Fox Sports Florida