You are smarter than you know, Skinny. Except that the picture you linked to is a Sharp-shinned Hawk, not a Merlin. I see that it’s the first Google Image result for Merlin, but remember the golden rule: don’t believe everything you see on the internets. When I went into the guy’s page it turns out someone had already corrected him, but the bad label still makes it into Google. In fact, a Sharp-shinned is more likely in the back yard than a Merlin, but if you thought it was “big” then it was probably a Cooper’s Hawk, which looks almost exactly the same as Sharp-shinned but larger. These two are Accipiters, bird-hunting hawks that can dart through tree branches; Merlin would prefer more open areas. Juveniles of all three are somewhat similar, but while Merlin and Sharp-shin are barely the size of a pigeon, Cooper’s is more crow-sized.
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- alex 1-06-2009 6:09 pm