Merlin

About the Merlin

The Merlin is a small, dark, heavily built falcon with none of the kestrel's delicacy - a bird-hunting missile barely bigger than a jay. Males are blue-gray above, females and young brown, all with streaked underparts, a banded tail, and a weak mustache mark on a fierce face.

Merlins hunt by surprise and raw speed, coursing low over open ground and accelerating after flushed songbirds or shorebirds in twisting tail-chases. They do not stoop from height like Peregrines; they simply run their prey down. A perched Merlin on a bare snag will scatter every small bird in sight.

In Texas, Merlins are winter visitors and migrants statewide, most numerous along the coast where shorebird flocks concentrate, with singles turning up inland around reservoirs, prairies, and even city parks.