Happy New Year Tweeters,

I had a very unusual observation on the first day of the new year. This
was on
the north slope of Queen Anne hill (just south of the Ship Canal), a
block west
of the university.

A smallish raptor, mostly brown with a brown streaky breast on buff
background, made a dive at a flock of small birds feeding on the ground
under
a cedar. It then made a kind of movement that reminded me of a car
fish-tailing
(yeah, I'm a city dweller alright); it was apparently trying to quickly
turn and
grab at the little guys while just a foot or so off the ground,
essentially hovering
over a small patch of ground. This lasted for all of a couple of
seconds.

I pished under the tree, listening to the terrified twittering of the
little birds,
until I finally got a good view and identified them as bushtits. Now
what where
they doing on the ground? And why on earth would a merlin waste energy
on
a bushtit??
Michael Patrick
mpatrick at eldec.com