Hi Original Tweets,

I'd like to make a comment or two about the recent spate of Merlin posts here on Tweeters.

First off, regarding subspecies, much has been alluded to in these posts, some enlightening and some "endarkening" if you will.

We do have two races of Merlin that occur in western Washington all year. Both breed here, in some cases together, i.e. a Black with a Taiga Merlin. I have seen this several times now as have many of my colleagues. So they are capable of mixing the two subspecies together.

We have the Black Merlin (F.c.suckleyi) named for George Suckley, who, incidentally, collected the first one at Steilacoom in the mid-1800's. They were first reported as breeders in WA by Dawson and Bowles (1909) near Puyallup.

We also have what used to be called the Western Merlin (a name I still really like) but this was dropped back in 1972 after Stan Temple wrote an article on the races of Merlins in North America. This is available on SORA (AUK April 1972) so you can download and read it at home. It is still a pretty good read. One of the things that you will notice in his article is how difficult it can be to separate them, even in the hand.

I think this might explain some of the frustration expressed in the recent posts.

I am not certain why identifying the precise subspecific identity of a particular bird is so important, but in general, we just call them Black or Brown Merlins and let it go at that. Ed Biglow, a falconer living in SE BC, has all three races breeding in his area. The combinations of young that result would confound anyone. So don't be too worried if you can't call them in the field. Some you can, some you can't. And, of course, this is the problem with field guides in general. Because of space and costs, they are limited in their ability to show all of the variations possible (much to the frustration of the authors I am sure).

Anyway, the Western is now termed the Taiga Merlin, as it breeds all the way across North America in the Taiga or boreal forest zone. When Temple wrote the article, there were very few good records of nesting Merlins, especially the brown form, in western Washington, but pioneering work by Tom Gleason, Al Ingram and others in the 1990's confirmed that there were pairs breeding on the Olympic Peninsula and within the Puget Sound basin.

Since 2000, when the first city pair was reported from Bellingham (both black birds), the species has "marched" its way down into Burlington, Sedro Woolley, Mt. Vernon, Marysville, Anacortes, Edmonds and finally Seattle in 2008. As they become more common in cities, we expect their numbers will increase substantially as we saw with Red-tailed Hawks, Bald Eagles, peregrines and, most recently, the accipiters being studied by Jack Bettesworth.

Also, it has been stated that Richardson's Merlin occurs here in western WA. It definitely does show up east of the Cascade Mountains. We have caught two at Entiat Ridge above Leavenworth during the fall migration and Joe Snyder has caught them in Spokane. But in all of the years that I have been looking at Merlins, I have never seen one west of the Cascades in Washington.

We do see pale Taiga birds, like the one currently in Edison (Skagit County), and I think they are often mistaken for Richardson's Merlins due to the tan coloration of plumage. But until I see one in hand (or pictures of one on hand), I'd be skeptical. To get a positive ID, you'd need to see all five tails bands (all five bordered by dark), the presence of anterior barring on the outermost primary and complete barring on the second most distal spot on the posterior vane of the outermost primary.

I am not saying that it is not possible that a few could eventually show up. As bird people, we all know just about anything is possible in this arena. But, personally, I'd need some pretty definite evidence to confirm it.

Incidentally, we had a meeting of 20 or so Merlin people just this weekend to organize a cooperative study of this very issue. Dan Varland of the Coastal Raptor Survey, Jack Bettesworth and also banders from the Falcon Research Group were all in attendance. Our main goal is to obtain DNA samples for a continent-wide survey of North American Merlins being conducted by Josh Hull of the USFWS. He is focusing on many of these same subspecific issues. Hawk banders all across the country are contributing to his work.

Our Washington cooperative Merlin Study Group will be banding Merlins here in western WA over the next year or two to provide Josh with samples and hopefully to help with learning more about the relationships among NA Merlins. Kent Woodruff at Chelan Ridge has already started out with 24 samples from this last fall migration so we are all hoping to contribute a really large sample size for the study.

So, if there are other Merlin banders in the NW, especially here in WA, and you would like to join this effort, please get in touch.

Hope this might help......

Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232 USA
(360) 757-1911 (office)
(206) 962-7838 (cell)
bud at frg.org