Merlin

So I got lucky and saw that skunk from yesterday’s post before the owl guru did, but she soon showed me up and spied today’s totally awesome photo subject first. In fact, if I hadn’t been with her, I likely wouldn’t have even known what it was and wouldn’t have tried to ID it. Every once in a while if I am birding with her, she will suddenly quickly say, “can you get a picture of that bird?”. I’ve learned that when she does I should react quickly, although little did we know in those first few seconds there would be no reason to react quickly in this particular situation. I snapped a few pictures then asked, “what am I taking pictures of?”. “I think a merlin, and if so, we’re going to need evidence for ebird because they migrate and he should be gone by now.” Merlins are one of our smallest raptors: they are falcons a little bigger than a kestrel.

So I zoomed in on the photos and confirmed it was definitely a merlin. The merlin took off. Then the merlin returned seconds later and sat facing us and posing for photos (by this time Sharon had her own camera out). This process repeated over and over again: the merlin would look right at us for a few minutes, then take off in pursuit of another bird to try to eat, miss, and return to his perch for more photos. I found a dead mouse on the trail nearby and Sharon joked she wanted to toss it to the poor merlin because he was doing a terrible job of catching dinner. But at least we had plenty of time to admire him.

Unfortunately, the light was good, but the merlin was just far enough away (and tiny enough) that I really needed a tripod to stabilize the camera and I hadn’t carried one with me, therefore these photos are less sharp than I’d like. But this is only the second merlin I’ve seen and he’s a raptor, so this qualifies as Very Exciting and gets posted despite not being high quality. (And since when has “high quality” been a requirement for being posted here, haha.)