MERLIN

Friday morning at dawn exactly as the day's first orangish light slanted in from the east a shadowy figure glided into a tree about forty feet before me as I breakfasted at my table, gazing out the window. The sun rose on the bird's other side so everything was silhouetted. Still, this silhouette looked like a raptor and raptors aren't commonly seen here, so I picked up the camera and started snapping. You can see what emerged after a lot of PhotoShop manipulation above.

That looks like an immature or female Merlin, in North America sometimes called the Pigeon Hawk, FALCO COLUMBARIUS. As the genus name shows, it's a small falcon. The Merlin is a "holarctic breeder," meaning that it nests at northern clines in both the New and Old World. In North America it summers mostly in Canada and Alaska and the US's northern Rocky Mountain states. It winters from the US southern states to northern South America, and at this time of year it might turn up anyplace in Mexico.

Three winters ago when I was at San Juan Hacienda near Telchac Pueblo close to the Yucatán's northern cost a bird just like this, minus the back's white spots, showed up for a few days. I was too unsure of my identification to mention it then, but now I'm surer. I've seldom seen Merlins elsewhere so I'm wondering if maybe the Yucatán might be one of the species' favored overwintering spots? Howell describes its habitat preference as "Open and semiopen country, estuaries, lakes, coasts." I've only seen it in hacked-up scrub, here, and early Sunday morning probably the same bird was spotted hunting in a long-abandoned cornfield with woody shrubs at the edge of town.