Dear Tweeters,

On 10-17-07, I stopped my vehicle to look at two
Red-tailed Hawks on Cockreham Island (Skagit). They
were looking down from a high perch at something in
the road.

The something turned out to be a dark Merlin. The
Merlin was running back and forth across the narrow,
paved road, occasionally pecking at something on the
pavement. I got fantastic looks at the Merlin,
probably the best view of one I have yet had in the
wild.

At first I thought it was insects that the Merlin
would be pecking at.

Then a herd of aggressive cows came thundering over
toward the fence, as they often do at this dairy, and
the Merlin flew off into the brush between road and
river, causing some passerines to start chattering.
When I drove slowly up to see what the Merlin had been
pecking at, I found a flattened blackbird, apparently
a male Brewer's. I am pretty sure that the blackbird
was a road-kill; big flocks of blackbirds frequent
this spot, and cars and trucks do pass close to the
flock quite often. I figure a Merlin would carry off a
blackbird, if it had killed the songbird itself.

Entrails were poking up out of the body of the
blackbird. It seems the Merlin was getting a few bites
of edible meat, although the carcass was quite flat,
and seemed to be little more than a mass of flat black
feathers, with some fleshy matter matted down onto the
macadam.

So--do Merlins regularly eat carrion?

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch


Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com


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