Merlin spotted several times in 19th ward

[marti4894]

Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have observed an adult merlin in the area around our home in the 19th ward of Rochester.  The first time we saw him/her was in a tree and when my husband made a critter sound, the merlin swooped down and flew right over our heads.  The next time we saw it, it was busy munching dinner on top of of power pole.  It stayed there for over an hour and I took a ton of pictures, none of which came out very well.  Then we saw it again yesterday, swooping down after the many sparrows that come to our feeder.  I wonder if it is the same one that was in the area a few years ago and if it is going to find a mate and have a nest.  Wouldn't that be cool.  I will continue to watch for it and try to get some decent pictures.

Marti M.

[valhalla]

Very cool, Marti!  Merlins and Kestrels have wonderful faces! 

[Shaky]

Thanks for the info, Marti. Congrats on your first post too!

Please be sure to tell your neighbors to refrain from calling the cops when a bunch of falcon watchers with cameras and binoculars (and a few dogs) invade the neighborhood.

[Joyce]

I'm envious!  Carol, Dana, and other watchers have sighted Merlins and been able to photograph them.  Where is the 19th Ward? You don't have give out the address but you can send me a private message with the street.  I've seen the new Merlin at Wild Wings and would like to see one in its environment.

Joyce

P.S.  I'll be the one with a long lens camera and 2 dogs.

[jeanne]

Wasn't there a newspaper article a few years ago about merlins in the 19th word?  Perhaps this is a member of the same family?

The Wild Wings merlin is from the rochester area but I'm not sure where she was found

[marti4894]

Hi again,

I decided to find a few of the "not-so-good" pictures of this merlin and put them in an album to share.

here they are... no-so-good, but you can tell it is a merlin by the "side-burns" and the vertical striping on the chest.  One picture sort of shows the tail with it's bars.

Marti

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=888787902506%3A1060028820 

[valhalla]

   Yup one of those "tiny falcons" 

[jeanne]

From a 2006 D&C article:

Copyright 2006 - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle NY - All Rights Reverved

Mark Hare

Senior editor

Laurie Kapuscinski was walking her dog about 6 one morning this spring when she spotted the merlins high atop the conifer in Bob and Diane Larter's yard.

"I ran home to wake up Tim (her husband, Tim Tatakis) and tell him, 'I think I found the nest.' It was very exciting," she said.

Kapuscinski and Tatakis had heard the birds' distinctive call last summer in their 19th Ward neighborhood in southwest Rochester -- and again this April, but they did not know whether the sounds belonged to a mating pair.

Elise Carter first became aware of the merlins in early spring when she and her husband began to hear an unfamiliar bird call.

"The calling went on all day and was hard to ignore," Carter says, "reminding us of jungle sounds in nature documentaries."

At first, Carter and her husband, Hal, weren't sure what the birds were, but with their binoculars, they could see that the birds had nested in a tall evergreen in the Larters' yard. They learned a short time later that a bird watcher had identified the pair as merlins, a falcon that has not been known to nest in Rochester in more than 60 years.

Kapuscinski, who lives just north and west of the Larters, says, "I had been looking for them because I saw the male earlier in the spring and I read that typically the males come first and scope out the area."

Until now, the merlins seen here have mostly been birds migrating along the lakeshore in spring. And even then they have been relatively rare. Only about 20 a year, on average, have been tallied over the years at the Braddock Bay Raptor Research hawkwatch.

Merlins have also turned up as visitors at other times of the year. But there have been no recent breeding records in our region. The last was in 1939, when a nest was reported atop a dead tree stub near the Genesee River at Scottsville, according to Clark Beardslee and Harold Mitchell in Birds of the Niagara Frontier Region.

While some of their neighbors watched the merlins soar and swoop overhead into the summer, taking some delight in the fledglings, or young birds (three, according to most observers), the Larters were not aware they had become merlin innkeepers for the season.

"I'm not a bird person," says Diane Larter, the former deputy director of Monroe County's Department of Health and Human Services. "I never saw them."

"I wasn't aware they were here," says her husband, Bob, owner of the King Sales carnival supplies and shop on Sager Drive. "But I have a neighbor who told me about them and I looked them up on the Internet. I think they took off after a really bad thunderstorm."

Elise Carter began to hear additional calls, immature calls she attributed to young merlins in early summer.

"The babies were flying all over, lower than the adults, sometimes playfully chasing each other, swooping up and down," she says.

The 19th Ward was one of Rochester's first truly integrated neighborhoods, thanks in part to a very active community association and a long tradition of middle-class families who describe themselves as "urban by choice."

Like many neighborhoods, though, the 19th Ward has suffered the stress that attaches to older cities with declining populations.

Its residents and businesses hope for a renaissance, starting perhaps with the long-awaited Brooks Landing development across the river from the University of Rochester.

The merlins could be a metaphor for renewal, a sign of change and hope -- visible and appreciated only by those who take the time to really watch and listen.

They have returned to urban areas, says Ann Hobbs, public information specialist with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, because of reforestation (especially conifers) across the Northeast and the "proliferation of some of their favorite food sources, mourning doves and especially European starlings."

Their move into cities and suburbs shows that merlins "have been adapting to the fact that birds are concentrating at bird feeders," says Bruce Peterjohn, a wildlife biologist at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md.

At first, merlins appeared at feeding stations only during winter; but they have become year-round residents in some places.

They may or may not return to the 19th Ward next spring. But some 19th Warders say they expect the merlins to return in 2007.

"I'm sure one of them at least was on the roof of our balcony chattering at me when I sat in my chair," says harpist Susan Morehouse, who lives down the street from the Larters and Carters. "We were told there were no merlins here and I kept trying to make them immature peregrine falcons."

Like Morehouse, Kapuscinski, a project manager at Xerox Corp., and Tatakis, chairman of the biology department at Monroe Community College, are sure the merlins were in Rochester a year ago.

"We didn't notice them until the fledglings were out," Kapuscinski says. "But once you've heard them, there's no mistake."

"They are very active in the morning, right around 5:30," says Tatakis. "They are fearless and very loud."

"We hope they come back next year," says Kapuscinski, echoing the sentiments of several of her neighbors.

Includes reporting by staff writer Bob Marcotte.

[jeanne]

And another from 2006

Copyright 2006 - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle NY - All Rights Reverved

Bob Marcotte

Staff writer

They were the particular favorites of Catherine the Great and Mary Queen of Scots, who enjoyed the "sport" of releasing captive merlins and watching them spiral upward -- in so-called "ringing flights" -- in pursuit of skylarks.

Formerly known as pigeon hawks, merlins are one of three species of falcons that regularly occur in the eastern United States. They're smaller than the much-publicized peregrine falcons that nest atop the Kodak office tower. Instead, they're very similar in size to the American kestrel, a fairly common breeder here that can sometimes be seen hovering over medians of our expressways in search of prey.

However, size is about all that merlins have in common with kestrels. "A Merlin is to a Kestrel what a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is to a scooter," states the highly acclaimed Hawks in Flight, written by Pete Dunne, David Sibley and Clay Sutton.

Merlins, they note, are "highly aggressive, pugnacious raptors" with wing beats that are "quick, continuous, and powerful," and delivered in "short, pistonlike strokes." Merlins go out of their way to harass other birds of prey, even ones that are much larger.

They also differ in important respects from peregrine falcons. Merlins, for example, don't need a cliff or even a tall building such as the Kodak office tower to serve as a cliff substitute. They'll gladly take up residence in an old crow's or hawk's nest in a tall conifer, thank you. Even in residential areas. A nest in Grand Forks, N.D., was located in the yard of a fraternity house at a busy intersection.

Merlins also differ from peregrines in the way they go after prey. Peregrines are famous for diving at speeds of up to 200 mph to stun a pigeon.

Merlins, on the other hand, do not normally "stoop" on their prey from above. Instead, they fly directly at their target from a tree-top hunting perch, or swoop in below the treetops to flush smaller birds out in the open.

Urban merlins find an abundant food supply in the ubiquitous house sparrow and that other nuisance bird, the European starling, says Ann Hobbs, public information specialist with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca.

Which might have old-time 19th Warders wondering: Gee, where were these guys when we needed them? During the late 1940s through the early '60s, an estimated 30,000 starlings swooped into the 19th Ward in late summer to roost for the night along Burlington Avenue, just a few blocks from where the merlins nested this year.

More than 160 residents petitioned the city to do something about the noise, the fouled sidewalks and the ensuing stench.

Various remedies were attempted: gunpowder detonations, smudge pots, ammonia spray, Roman candles. Residents walked the streets, pounding on garbage can lids with baseball bats. Police patrols even fired shotgun blasts into the masses of birds. All to no avail.

It is interesting to speculate what a pugnacious merlin or two might have accomplished.