Weekend brunch

A utility pole across the street and one house down has, for years, been an object of interest for a variety of birds. The hairy and downy woodpeckers drum on it in the spring, and various songbirds hang out and rest on the top. About a month ago now I saw a raptor up there, eating something. It was a female merlin (Falco columbarius). According to Cornell’s All About Birds, merlins are in our area during the nonbreeding season, but I’ve never been certain about having seen one.

On the morning of Saturday 13 March I went outside to look around, and saw a bird on the pole. It appeared to be either eating or cleaning its beak. I ran inside to grab the camera, which fortunately had my longest lens and the 1.4x teleconverter attached, and snapped off a bunch of shots. The sun was rising, but I was able to get some decent photos of the bird even though from the best vantage point it was backlit.

Clearly, he’s eating something:

But what is it eating? Rodent bits?

No, look at that foot. It’s a bird!

Yep. Definitely a bird.

And here he is, taking a break between courses:

Merlins are members of the falcon family. Smaller birds make up the majority of a merlin’s prey, but they also eat large insects such as grasshoppers. As with peregrine falcons, merlin populations were severely reduced in the years when DDT was widely used to keep insect populations down, but they have since recovered. Truly, the recovery of birds of prey after DDT was banned is one of the great successes of conservation biology.

There were feathers in the street below the pole. I assume they are from the merlin’s prey, as when I looked at the top of the pole through binoculars I could see the same sort of feathers up there. I compared the feathers with photos on a few ID sites, but it’s no easy identifying feathers without any additional context. Someone suggested that they might be from a male house finch. We have lots of those around all the time, so that’s probably the best guess possible.

So there you have it: Saturday brunch with songbird on the menu!