I am really botching this bird id! My hunter is not a kestrel, or a merlin,
but a sharp-shinned hawk. Here is the bird description: the size of a
flicker, slate blue/gray solid back reaching up over the back of the head and
down to the eyes. Underneath the eyes and down the belly is cream color with
light brown markings. The tail, seen from looking head-on at the bird, is
light color with horizontal brown bands.

I thought it was a merlin because the National Geographic Society Field Guide
to the Birds of No. America had an illustration of a merlin that looked just
like this (pg. 202 of my edition) and the text describes the adult male as
gray-blue. Actual photographs in my Audubon Field Guide to North American
Birds and the Audubon Encyclopedia of No. American Birds either show the
birds in question photographed from below in flight or the pictures make it
difficult to see whether the color is brown or grey.

Last night I was reading through the hawk section and it dawned on me that it
may be a Sharp-Shinned Hawk when I read this passage, "in hunting, fierce,
bold; beats low over ground, darting under branches along woods path, across
small openings, or through brushy fields or meadows, turns abruptly in flight
to drop to ground to grasp small bird or plucks it out of air or from twig
and continues on way, bird clutched in its sharp talons."

Thanks for the posts from other Tweeters who helped me to correctly identify
this for my Cornell FeederWatch survey. I would rather stick to woodpeckers
and song birds.

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Arlene Sopranzetti, Renton, WA
Heritage Software Inc. - Accounting CPE Tracking Software
http://www.halcyon.com/cpelog/