Fall Birding in Central Park

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Fall birding is not about numbers; it’s about the special birds you see when you’re not really expecting them. On my first two October visits to Central Park – October 2 and 7 – I logged 34 fairly predictable species, although a male Black-throated Blue Warbler was a bit of a surprise. A week later, October 13, the Park was quieter and leaves were falling away, but one-by-one I had special sightings. First was a Carolina Wren, high in trees above. I had seen his cousin, the Winter Wren, on bpth previous visits, but I was delighted to get another good view, as he hopped onto the fence along the path. Then, a pair of Blue-headed Vireos passing through. A Golden-crowned Kinglet – always a favorite – darted onto a tree in front of me. Those, plus possible Blackburnian Warbler and Cooper’s Hawk sightings, gave me a good day, I thought, as I departed the Ramble. On my way out I diverted onto Cedar Hill without further expectations, only to come across a flock of Chipping Sparrows with the season’s first Slate-colored Junco mixed in. Descending the hill I saw two birds jumping out of the grass: Palm Warblers! The numbers that day were low, but it seemed that almost each bird I saw was a new and special treat. Today, October 19, I made my last Park visit, a calm, sunny fall day. There were more White-throated Sparrows than before – and it seems the males migrate after the females/immatures – and again a lot of Hermit Thrushes, but not much else. As I was heading out, however, a Red-Tailed Hawk swooped onto a low limb above me, and a Brown Creeper, sign of approaching winter, climbed up the same tree.

One Play (Astros 2-Yankees 1)

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For those who underestimate the relevance of in-game managing and coaching decisions, the final play of last night’s 2-1 Astros’ win over the Yankees offers a lot to talk about. The situation: one out, the marvelous Jose Altuve on first base, game tied 1-1 bottom of the 9th, Aroldis Chapman pitching to Carlos Correa, who had already provided the Astros’ run with a homer, the count 3-2. First decision: do you send Altuve on the pitch? He’s a good basestealer, and Chapman has neither a good pickoff move nor a quick delivery home. On the flip side: Chapman throws 100 mph+, so the ball gets home quickly, Yankee catcher Gary Sanchez has a strong arm, and Chapman gets most of his outs by strikeout. I would have taken a gamble and sent him: worst case, a strikeout-throw-out doubleplay, the inning is over and you go to extras. But if the batter strikes out and Altuve stays at first, you’ve got two outs, a runner on first, Chapman throwing 100 and very little chance of getting two more hits before a third out. But Astros manager A.J.Hinch did not send the runner.
As it happens, Correa lines a shot into the gap between center and rightfield and Altuve takes off. Aaron Judge cuts the ball off and quickly throws to second base, where Correa arrives barely before the throw (two decisions we can also dissect). Third-base coach Gary Pettis, meanwhile, is windmilling Altuve home, even though the ball is approaching the infield before Altuve gets to third. Yankee shortstop Didi Gregorius fields Judge’s throw, realizes, perhaps with astonishment, that Altuve is still running, and fires home, where his throw arrives well before Altuve. The throw, however, is in the dirt, Sanchez has the same difficulty handling it he does with pitches in the dirt, Altuve slaps home plate with his left hand and the Astros win.
While Altuve and Correa are the acknowledged stars of this victory, what about the decision by Pettis to send Altuve home, on what could be described as a suicide mission? A decent throw by Gregorius – not that hard from second base – or a deft catch by Sanchez and Altuve would not only be out, but every second-guesser would have been blaming the idiot third-base coach. Why sacrifice a men-on-second-and-third-with-one-out situation for the off-chance that the Yankees would screw up? I would have held Altuve at third. But again, if Altuve had been running with the pitch, he would have scored, probably easily. So, the third-base coach’s daring was making up for the manager’s lack!
This, however, isn’t the end of the discussion, as I learned while watching ESPN this morning. Their baseball commentator Eduardo Perez laid the blame for the Astros’ game-winning play on Judge’s throw to second base – a “fundamental error,” according to Perez. Instead of throwing to second to try to get Correa – whose status as a baserunner was irrelevant – the outfielder should have thrown to the cutoff man who was better positioned to stop Altuve, the only runner who mattered. (Why this is so is not altogether clear but I believe goes like this: a throw to the cutoff man would be more directly lined up toward home, and Judge’s portion of the relay would be shorter: he was throwing slightly off balance as he caught Correa’s hit while running away from home plate. I don’t know how to compare the arm of the cutoff man, Starlin Castro, with Gregorius’s, although the latter is well regarded. Further, the cutoff man would not have been impeded by Correa’s stand-up slide as Gregorious was – a point argued vainly by Yankee manager Joe Girardi, seeking a reversal ruling – but that would not have figured into Judge’s decision.)
Not part of any discussion is the fourth decision, that of Correa to try to reach second base. There would seem to be no advantage to the Astros in his doing so: only Altuve’s run mattered. Yes, he could keep his team out of a double-play situation, but he could just as easily steal second on an ensuing pitch, it being unlikely the Yankees would try to stop him. In either case, the Yankees would be able to intentionally walk a batter to set up the double play. There was little to gain, but much to lose. Were Correa to be thrown out, Altuve would be on third with two outs, instead of one out, and a much, much lower probability of then scoring. Knowing, as he should have, that his run meant nothing, Correa should have stayed as far away from the action as he could. Contrary to this baseball logic, however, Correa beat the throw from the outfield and his slide got in the way, quite legally, of Gregorius’s ability to step toward home when he threw. This undoubtedly contributed to the throw’s ending up in the dirt. There is no way, however, that Correa could have foreseen this result when he rounded first. It’s unlikely he knew that Altuve would try to score, nor would he have known that Judge would throw to second or that his slide might impede Gregorius. I am sure that he was just acting on his baseball instinct: he hit a ball into the gap, which allowed him to try for an extra base.
In short, there were four discrete decisions that influenced the one key play that determined last night’s winner. That, even more than the one matter of faulty execution, is what makes baseball such an endlessly fascinating game.

Twins Post-Mortem

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No true Twins fan could be surprised that they lost to the Yankees in the one-game Wild Card Playoff last night. Their only legitimate hope was that Ervin Santana would regain his early-season form and throw a near-shutout, which was a possibility. When he missed with his first two pitches, however, and proceeded to walk the leadoff batter, after having been given a three-run lead to work with, you sort of knew that wasn’t going to happen. When he then gave up a three-run homer to the Yankees’ fourth batter, the game’s outcome was no longer in doubt.
Still, it was encouraging, and exciting, to see the Twins start the game with a home run by Brian Dozier, a home run by Eddie Rosario and base hits by Eduardo Escobar and Max Kepler off Yankee ace Luis Severino. These guys, you felt, are for real and have a bright future. The fun stopped when we reached the bottom third of the order, which went hitless all night – surprisingly, in the case of Robbie Grossman, discouragingly for Jason Castro, and worryingly for Byron Buxton, who did get an rbi by beating out his double-play grounder. Buxton is still, we hope, a work in progress. He started to strike out less in the season’s second half, but he has to develop into a better contact hitter, or at least continue to improve his bunting.
The Twins also developed a surprisingly efficient bullpen out of very little, and except for a four-pitch walk with the bases loaded by Alan Busenitz they held their own last night. The problem, going forward, is starting pitching, and when you look at the starting rotation of the few good teams in the Majors – the Indians, Red Sox, Astros, Dodgers, Nationals – you can see how far the Twins are from seriously contending for a title. Yes, the Twins made the Playoffs, but they did so by beating up on the Tigers: none of the 10 teams they beat out had even a .500 record!
Santana, you feel, will never again have as good a year, and he trailed off considerably as the season wore on. Berrios has a live arm with the stuff to excel, and maybe he will. This year the Twins patched together a rotation with Kyle Gibson (terrible then good), Bartolo Colon (soon to be 45 years old), Adelberto Mejia (seemingly destined to be a journeyman, at best) and a parade of disappointments from their farm teams. Trevor May could return from his injury, but beyond that it is hard to see where the arms will come from. While it is almost routine now to find relievers who outshine their pedigree, there is little precedent for unknowns becoming dependable starters. Maybe take a big gulp and trade Miguel Sano? He has always been deemed the team’s future, but the Twins hit better once he was injured; his strikeouts are troubling; and he hasn’t kept healthy for long.
We’ll watch with interest as the new front office makes moves over the winter. The Twins, at least, are suddenly worth watching.

Twins Stretch Run

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Readers of earlier posts can imagine how little I ever expected to be writing about the Twins’ “stretch run” at the start of September 2017. Yet here they are, one game behind the faltering Yankees for the top wild-card spot in the American League, two games in the loss column ahead of the closest of six credible pursuers. While it would be fun to see them make the playoffs, that doesn’t really matter. One, because they would have little chance against either the Indians or the Red Sox, should they even get that far. But two, because their success so far augurs so well for 2018 and seasons to come, which was the rosiest timetable anyone realistically had when the year started.
The greatest cause for optimism is the almost-simultaneous turnaround in hitting by Jorge Polanco and Byron Buxton. Both were batting in the .200 neighborhood in May. Buxton was an automatic strikeout at the lineup bottom and Polanco would have been shipped to the minors if he had not been out of options. Now they are batting 3rd and 4th in the lineup, both with unexpected power. And Buxton even seems to have learned how to bunt! Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler and Brian Dozier have all been streak hitters, carrying the Twins at various points of the summer, all capable of multi-homer games. Joe Mauer, whom we had all but given up on, is now flirting with hitting .300 and has delivered clutch hits, although his home run swing still produces warning-track fly-outs to left more often than not. The part-timers – Eduardo Escobar, Robbie Grossman, Ehire Adrianza, Chris Gimenez – have all performed serviceably; the jury remains out on newer arrivals Kennys Vargas, Mitch Garver, and Zack Granite.
So far unmentioned is Miguel Sano. Perhaps it is a coincidence that the Twins have had so many offensive explosions recently with him on the disabled list. Yes, he still leads the team in home runs and rbi, but he was about to obliterate the Twins strikeout records, including most games with three or more Ks. More often than not, since the All-Star break Sano was a black hole at the middle of the lineup. He was dangerous, but he was also a rally-killer. It is possible, as one blogger suggested, that Sano’s absence has caused the Polancos and Rosarios to step up; no one is looking to Sano to hit the big fly, so everyone else is stepping up. But just as Buxton’s progress has shown that it is possible to develop as a hitter and cut down on strikeouts, we can hope that Sano in future years could in fact become the dominant force he has shown signs of in the past. It is this prospect of a more mature Sano with improvements from Buxton, Rosario, Kepler and Polanco that has Twins fans salivating.
Pitching, of course, is a problem, and the reason we would be nervous about the Twins’ playoff chances this year. Ervin Santana is pitching like an ace and Jose Berrios is showing signs of becoming an ace in the future. Relievers have been doing their job, and this year has shown that you never know where your stoppers will come from. At the moment, the top two in the Twins bullpen are Busenitz and Hildenberger, whom no one had heard of in April – or June. Before that it was Taylor Rogers and Matt Belisle. But a team needs five starters, and the Twins just have, for sure, those two. Kyle Gibson has been tempting for several years, but his only consistency has been his ability to disappoint. Bartolo Colon is now the number three guy, but he is 44 and not getting younger. So, one or two or preferably three new names will have to show up at spring training next year if the Twins are to become the complete team that can take its place among the elite and make another run at a World Series. I’m hoping.

Twins Midseason

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Few, if any, predicted that the Twins would end the first half of the 2017 season above .500, albeit by one game and falling fast; so despite my negative thoughts to come I have to rate their performance so far as a wonderful surprise. More days than not this spring I have found myself on a Twins high.
What has caused this success, however partial? Every player has had a hand, whether it’s Buxton’s great defense, Rosario going 5-for-5, Kepler’s three-home-run game, Mauer’s steady climb toward .300, on and on. Ditto for the pitching: Duffey and Rogers have frequently excelled as setup men, Kintzler is near the league lead in saves, Berrios has been a revelation as a starter. The two biggest contributors, however, and here is where the worry starts, have been Ervin Santana on the mound and Miguel Sano at the plate. They have singlehandedly willed the Twins to more victories than anyone else.
Worry, I say, because Santana, after a great April and May, has been pedestrian, at best, the entire month of June. Is his confidence gone, has his arm tired? – whatever the problem, it is hard to see him regaining his dominant form. Sano, too, has begun striking out with such regularity that you wonder if the scouts have figured him out or if he, too, has begun doubting himself. When Sano is not hitting, there is a big hole in the middle of the Twins lineup.
The other Twins hitters – and here I’m talking about Kepler, Polanco, Escobar, Dozier, Castro, Vargas – all seem to blow hot and cold. For every breakout performance, there seem to be two or three games where no one hits and the Twins manage but a run or two. I do like them all, though, and whenever I doubt their future stardoms I say to myself two words: Aaron Hicks. The Twins gave him every chance to succeed as their centerfielder, but he never really caught on. Same with the Yankees last year. This year, however, he is one of the Yankees’ best players, which makes me believe that a player with talent can figure things out and blossom late in his 20s. Rosario, Kepler and Polanco all have the tools to be stars, and with experience they might be. (Polanco’s future, however, is at second base, where I fully expect him to supplant Dozier in a year or two once one of their shortstop prospects – Royce Lewis? – is ready.) Even Buxton, still very much a work in progress, could develop.
Pitching, however, is a different story, and this will doom the Twins to being a .500 team in the near future, despite the maturation of their hitters – all of whom, I should add, are solid defenders. Berrios is already penciled in at the top of the rotation for years to come, as expected. But after him the cupboard looks bare. Santana, as noted, may already be on the down curve. Hector Santiago has been smoke and mirrors for a couple years and appears to have run out of gas. Kyle Gibson just never gets better: four good innings then implosion. The Twins haven’t even had a fifth starter much of this year, dropping down into their farm system whenever a fifth starter is needed, generally without success. This makes one wonder who there is down there being developed for the future. The most promising so far, Felix Jorge, came up directly from AA and has only thrown 5+ innings. Tyler Duffey is solid three out of four outings, and you wonder why the Twins aren’t working him back into the starting rotation instead of using him in the sixth inning. Taylor Rogers has been the lefthanded surprise of the staff, and he has now been anointed as the 8th-inning setup man. Kintzler makes me nervous – I’d prefer a strikeout artist for my closer – but he will do. The rest of the bunch – Belisle and Breslow, for sure, Pressly probably – are just space savers. When the starters can’t go six innings, the bullpen flaws are magnified, and I believe the Twins have the league’s worst relief ERA.
The Twins, thanks to their surprising start and the mediocrity of the Central Divison, won’t lose 100 games again this year; and if they can go 32-49 they won’t lose 90. Whether they can keep their spirits up once they fall far behind the Indians and maybe the Royals may be a test of how far this bunch can go in the next few years. Without pitching, however – and where is that to come from? – the ceiling remains limited.

Two Twins Wins

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Watching Ervin Santana breeze through a four-hit shutout of the Giants Friday was a relaxing marvel; he was so dominant and he had such a lead, thanks to his own three-run double, that I was never even nervous. His delivery is effortless, his demeanor unchanging, and he spots his pitches perfectly, mixing sliders and fastballs, changing speeds so that the hitters rarely square up on the ball, even if they make contact. It was easy; it was masterful.
The night before the Twins won by defense. No one expected Kyle Gibson to pitch into the seventh and give up only one run, followed by three scoreless innings from the Twins’ top relievers, and it only happened because of three key plays. Joe Mauer made a diving stop at first, obviating a first-and-third, no-out crisis. Byron Buxton made a sensational leaping over-the-head catch that saved two runs. Pitcher Tyler Rogers stabbed a rocket liner up the middle and doubled the lead runner off second. To emphasize the importance of defense, the Twins’ winning run scored on Robinson Cabo’s two errors on the same play.
June 10, 2017

The “Quality Appearance”

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Baseball these days can seem overrun with statistics – Batting Average with Runners in Scoring Position and Two Outs, for example – yet records for pitchers all seem to me fundamentally flawed. Which is why I am proposing a new, more meaningful, one, which I will get to in a minute. First, however, a recap of some existing flaws.
For years, Won-Lost has been the gold standard for pitchers. The first problem, though, is that its validity is largely limited to starting pitchers, the only ones who routinely have some control over a game’s outcome. The emphasis, however, must be on “some.” We are all familiar with the “hard-luck loser,” who pitches eight innings, allows one measly run, yet suffers a 1-0 defeat. (Last night the Indians’ Josh Tomlin surrendered a first-pitch, first-inning opposite-field home run to the Twins’ Miguel Sano and suffered that fate.) The flip side is the lucky winner, who gives up five runs in five innings, yet records a win because his teammates have clobbered the opposing pitcher for more. Sometimes this averages out over the course of a season, but sometimes it doesn’t. Then there is the disparity among offenses. A pitcher for a hitting-starved team could give up three runs a game and finish with an 8-12 won-lost record; while his counterpart for a powerhouse could allow the same number of runs and wind up 12-8.
The next most recognized statistic is Earned Run Average, which would show the equivalence of the two pitchers in the above example. This statistic in theory should also work for relief pitchers as well as starters, and it has the advantage of not being dependent on the hitting success of the pitcher’s team. Its weakness, though, is its failure to account for situational pitching, which is crucial in evaluating a relief pitcher’s value. By “situation” I mean both the stage of the game – is the scored 7-2 in the eighth inning, or 3-2 in the ninth? – and the situation within the inning. A reliever who enters the game with two outs and the bases loaded and gives up a triple is a failure, yet his ERA will go down if he gets the next batter out. Conversely, the pitcher who let those three runners reach base while getting two outs will see his ERA soar, even though no one scored while he was pitching. The other problem with judging a reliever by his ERA is that one bad outing can skew it, because relievers pitch so few innings compared to starters. (Last night the Twins brought in Matt Belisle with one out, one on in the eighth inning of a 1-0 game despite an unheard-of ERA north of 11.00, precisely because that figure bore little connection to his perceived reliability.)
I have written elsewhere about the Save, the least useful number of all. 1) It only is relevant for the usually one pitcher per team who gets to pitch the ninth inning. 2) The number depends on his team’s success rate – only the winning team can record a save. 3) The criteria are too loose to be meaningful: a reliever can give up two runs in the only inning he pitches (an ERA rate of 18.00) and still get a save.
Because of the overemphasis on Saves, some baseball writers in 1986 came up with the Hold as a way of recognizing the effectiveness of middle relievers, who don’t get Save opportunities. Although routinely included in game box scores, the Hold is not an officially recognized statistic and there is some confusion as to what qualifies. The first prerequisite is the existence of a Save situation – so right there, it incorporates the weaknesses of that stat. The second requirement is that the reliever hand over pitching duties to the next reliever with his team still in the lead – which means, similar to the Save defect, that a reliever could load the bases while recording only one out and earn a Hold despite doing a lousy job.
So, what would be a more useful measure of a pitcher’s – specifically, a reliever’s – performance? Say ‘hello’ to the QA – the Quality Appearance. A reliever earns a QA by recording three or more outs without giving up a run, including the runners he inherits and the runners he puts on base. Alternatively, if he enters a game with two or more men on base, and he records two outs, ends an inning and no one scores. That, after all, is what really matters – keeping the other team from scoring. This statistic has the advantage of applying whether a team is ahead or behind. After all, when a team is behind 3-2 late in the game, it is crucial to their chances of winning that they not give up another run; and the pitcher who holds that margin is doing just as important a job as the pitcher who is credited with a Hold. Yes, there are some flaws: a pitcher could lose a QA by giving up a run in a second or third inning of work, although the rule could be refined to cover that, if desired. And what happens to runners that a pitcher puts on base before he is relieved will depend on the relievers who follow. Not every good relief effort will be recognized, but many more will, and more fairly than either the Save or the Hold currently does.

The Waste Pitch

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Twins pitchers are apparently taught, or instructed, to waste a pitch whenever they get an 0-2 count. The theory, I’m guessing, is to see if the hitter, suddenly wary of striking out looking, will expand the strike zone and wave at an unhittable pitch. The 0-2 pitches that Twins hurlers deliver, however, tend to be so low, wide or high that no one ever swings. At best, the pitcher loses some of his advantage. The worst happened the other night to Tyler Duffey, who came on to relieve with the score tied, the bases loaded and no outs. His first two pitches made the Rangers’ Elvis Andrus look silly. Instead of trying to finish him off, his “waste pitch” bounced in the dirt and the lead run scored. Compounding the problem, the other runners advanced to second and third, so the infield “had to” play in. The next batter, with one out now, hit what would have been a double-play grounder, but it squirted just past the third baseman, playing in. Result of the “waste pitch”: three runs for the Rangers.
Speaking of strategy, I would also question the decision to have the corner infielders play in in that situation. Sano, especially, has quick reflexes and a gun for an arm; from his normal position he could throw out a runner going home a large percentage of the time. What is the counter-percentage, the number of times he doesn’t get to a ball because he is repositioned closer to home?
There is one more baseball orthodoxy I would question: when the Twins are leading in the 9th by two or more runs and an opposing batter gets to first base, they don’t hold him on and cede a free trip to second base. “The run means nothing,” we are told. But the chance to get an out at second base does have meaning. These days there are statistics for everything; so maybe my assumption can be rebutted. I feel, however, that I have seen many more times where an infielder could get an out at second but not at first than occasions where the first baseman made a play only because he was playing off the bag.
5/6/17 PS: Conversely, today a Twins pitcher with two outs and no one on threw an 0-2 slider that caught too much of the plate and ended up in the leftfield stands. Before a third out could be recorded, the Red Sox had eight runs and the game was effectively over. The Twins pitcher, Nick Tepesch, was making his first appearance with the Twins, so perhaps he hadn’t gotten the memo.

Twins in ’17

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It is far better to enter the baseball season with no, or low, expectations than to have high expectations that are quickly dashed. SI was not alone in predicting that this year’s Twins would have the third-worst record in the AL and even the Minnesota writers were guarded, expressing doubts, especially, about the Twins’ pitching. So how much should we raise our hopes now that the Twins have swept the Royals in convincing fashion in the opening three-game series? Their starting pitching was good, their relief pitching excellent, defense flawless and late-inning clutch hitting impressive.
Granted, three games is a small sample and the season will be long, but there is room for optimism. For starters, much of athletic success depends upon confidence and the belief that you can and will win. When you start the season 0-9, as the Twins did last year, it is hard to get that losing mentality out of your minds. When losing is expected, it happens more often. By winning their first three games, the Twins have to be thinking, We can win, which in itself will breed success.
Now, as to the pitching. While there is no Clayton Kershaw on the staff, there are six pitchers who, to my mind, give the Twins a chance every day. Ervin Santana is a consummate professional who knows exactly what he’s doing. Hector Santiago gives us hits but limits damage and seems to win more than he should. Kyle Gibson can be very good or not, but when he’s good he’s a winner. It may take awhile to shake out the rest of the rotation, but Phil Hughes, Adelberto Mejia, Tyler Duffey and Jose Berrios is a sufficient field to work with.
No one can ever predict how relievers will fare in a given season: there are always surprise stars and proven closers who falter. Confidence and the ability to throw strikes are important, and in the first three games all the relievers except the retread Craig Breslow showed potential.
On offense, the best news is the re-emergence of Miguel Sano as a hitter to be feared. He was wondrous in 2015 then disappointed horribly in 2016 and Strib writers questioned his offseason preparation. This winter, apparently, he buckled down and he has the look of a mainstay cleanup hitter. Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler just have to show some progress from their first seasons to be more than acceptable as corner outfielders. The big surprises so far are new catcher Jason Castro and new shortstop Jorge Polanco. Castro, especially, was signed as a defensive upgrade but to date has been the star of the attack, walking six times and driving in go-ahead runs. Polanco is supposed to be a natural hitter, and if he slumps Eduardo Escobar can pick up any slack.
The two big question marks have, curiously, been batting 3rd and 4th in Paul Molitor’s lineup: Byron Buxton and Joe Mauer. Buxton is clearly not ready for Major League pitching, and one has to wonder (like Clark Griffith did) if he ever will be. He is extraordinary in centerfield, and putting him lower in the order may allow him to relax and find his stride. It’s exciting to see him run and I hope he will get over whatever hump is stopping him; but for now it is excruciating to see him always hitting with an 0-2 count and knowing that a swing and miss will follow. As for Mauer, how long will his reputation and huge salary protect him? He is no longer the hitter who can wait for the pitcher to throw two strikes before he starts to swing. Without power, without speed, and with defenses shifted to cover his inside-out stroke, there is so little margin for error. Will he comfortably slide down to the 6th hole, or 8th?
Anyway, these are the little dramas we will watch as they play out over the summer. It is the soap opera of personalities, not just the game itself, that makes baseball so intriguing. Who knows how the Vikings’ left guard is doing? And some games a receiver may hardly be thrown at. But we know, and can watch, every single baseball player and can judge him in isolation, live and die with every at bat.

Birds of Coachella Valley

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In 4-1/2 days of birding from Palm Springs to Brawley, the Norseman and I came across 100 (or so) species in terrain ranging from below sea level to 8,400 feet above, from arid desert to snow-covered mountaintop. But rather than the numbers, it was certain sightings that will linger in my memory, notable either for the unusual bird or the place we saw it. Herewith, in order of observation, are nine of my favorites:
Burrowing Owl. Any owl is a treat to behold, and the Burrowing Owl has to be one of the cutest. We were told to just turn down Kalin Road southwest of Niland and watch the side of the road. Nothing for awhile, then there one was, standing calmly on the roadside berm, looking straight ahead (watching us?). A little further on – now that we knew what to look for – we came across a pair. Finally, as predicted, a fourth owl sat atop an abandoned tire. Little sentinels, the color of the surrounding dirt, totally unperturbed.
Snow Goose. I had seen a handful of snow geese before, an even a small flock flying overhead at our Minnesota house, but nothing prepared me for the hundreds, thousands?, that flocked in the fields, in the ponds and that wheeled en masse against a dark sky. The stark contrast between white and black was stunning – and matched by the also numerous White Pelicans – but it was the impression of the multitude against the landscape that, no matter how many places we saw it, took my breath away.
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher. After a day looking at big birds on and around the Salton Sea, it was refreshing to stop at a brush-lined canal and watch little land birds flitting. It became exciting when a male and female pair of gnatcatchers appeared and we saw the black cap, distinguishing it from the more familiar Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher.
Black-throated Sparrow. On a late-afternoon stroll through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park we were getting more exercise than birdlife when a chipping sound approached through the chaparral and a pair of sparrows came darting through the cactus-y scrub. Nothing is more exciting when encountering a sparrow than seeing a bold field mark, and this sparrow’s black throat was not only handsome but an undeniable mark of identification.
Sage Thrasher. Joshua Tree National Park was another site where natural beauty, not birds, was the object, but we pulled off the road at one “wash” to see what the desert might hold. As we chased a pair of Phainopeplas, wonderful in their own right, a small bird scurried along the desert floor, moving from one protective clump to another. It was its relative anonymity that marked it a Sage Thrasher, and we felt fortunate to have stumbled upon it in its predicted habitat.
Pinyon Jay. Go outside the park then back in to Black Rock to see a Pinyon Jay, the ranger at Cottonwood told us; so we headed there as the sun was setting on our day. We wandered the campsite, listening to House Finches and Cactus Wrens, then heard a jay-like call across a field, coming closer. Flashes of blue moved from distant tree to tree until we called one in to fly right over us. A lifer, for my last bird of the day.
Scott’s Oriole. From Palm Desert we climbed Highway 74 up into Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. With my poor Volt tiring from the grade and altitude, we pulled over onto the first side road we came to, Carrizo Road. A half-dozen Scrub Jays and a few White-Crowned Sparrows caught our attention amid a small grouping of weekend houses before a liquid song caught my attention. Soon, popping out of a bush, I spied an oriole with a beautiful lemon hue and deep black bib. We watched it move around our area for maybe ten minutes before it took off. “Uncommon on open arid hillsides where agaves and yuccas mix with oak or pine woodlands,” says Sibley – just where we found it.
Rock Wren. Another bird that knew its place (Sibley: “Uncommon on talus slopes and other expanses of jumbled rocks”), we watched this otherwise unremarkable bird climbing up a rock face on Henderson Trail off the Visitor Center in the above park. He was about the only bird we saw on the trail and he seemed to own it, moving around, singing loudly.
Mountain Chickadee. This was my favorite sighting of the trip, first because it came in the snowy emptiness of Mount San Jacinto State Park atop the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, where we felt lucky to find any bird at all. Then because it was a chickadee, a friendly familiar of bird feeders all my life, but with a difference: a white “eyebrow” that made it resemble a European tit. (I also thought I saw a thin white line on its crown, although the guidebooks don’t show that.) It quickly flew off, way off, not to be seen or heard again; and I thought how fortunate we were to be in that spot at that moment, which is always one of the thrills of birding.