Sabbatical

March 4, 2023 ~ I’m back, after a 3-month immersion in a special project: My brother and his wife are moving from Colorado to northeast Texas, and I volunteered to help come up with ideas for landscaping their new home. This involved traveling, measuring, sketching, and lots of research, since their climate and soil are very different from the heat, humidity and black gumbo of my home along the upper Texas coast. I’ve been having a great time, and there is more to come. We were also sick on and off with the T-Rex of sinus infections, finally thankfully over. And my household is now on a low-carb diet, so I’m learning how to cook real food on a schedule instead of slapping together sandwiches, or raiding the snack machine. Embracing all these new experiences has made a serious dent in my birding and posting , but we’re now well up the learning curve, and ready for more fun.

Enough about me, how about some birds?

January 2^nd was a mild gray Texas winter day, perfect for exploring, so I headed for the coast, first stopping at Brazos Bend State Park for a quick reconnoiter. The water had been so low during the late summer and fall, I was almost afraid to look, but nature has her own rhythms, and the winter rains were making good progress filling up the lakes. Pollywogs, at least, were plentiful.

That’s one. Want to see another?
1/3200 sec f/5.6 ISO 3200
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR
(Click on any photo once to enlarge in a new window; close that window to return here.)

Two! I can do this all day.
1/3200 sec f/5.6 ISO 3200
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

Three! And the crowd goes wild!!
 1/3200 sec f/5.6 ISO 3200
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

A Great Egret, Ardea alba, strode through the shallow water methodically plucking up hors d’oeuvres at 40-Acre Lake. You can see that, at almost every step, as he passes that slanted black stick in the foreground, he snatched up a tadpole, tossed it in the air, and swallowed it down, looking quite pleased with himself.

I headed south to Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, which includes more than 45,000 acres of salt marsh and freshwater sloughs surrounded by coastal prairie. And it’s this prairie land, dotted by outgrowths of woody groves and scrubby verges, that provides the perfect hunting habitat for another new bird on my list.

Unknown small raptor at Brazoria NWR
1/2500 f/6.3 ISO 1000
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

Scraggly trees dot the barbed wire fence along the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge Entrance Road, and it was in one of these gnarled Chinese Tallow trees that I spotted what I thought was a young hawk. Too small to be an adult, and definitely not an American Kestrel. Those eyebrows! Those pointy wings! What could it be?

Rolling closer to this small raptor
1/2500 f/6.3 ISO 640
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

I had to get home to look it up. This is a Merlin, Falco columbarius, also known as a Pigeon Hawk (recognizing a common prey animal) or Lady Falcon (for the fact that, in the Middle Ages, women of nobility would often join hunts with these smaller trained falcons). It is a small strong bird, with a longish tail and sharply pointed wings.

Merlin range map, courtesy of All About Birds

To keep identification interesting, there are three main color variations among Merlins: the Black, the Taiga, and the Prairie. Sibley’s gives a concise description of differences:

• The Black has a very dark back with almost completely dark undertail coverts; it is typically found along the west coast of North America.
• The Taiga has a medium brown or grayish brown back, buff undertail coverts with widely spaced dark streaks, a noticeable dark mustache, and narrow white eyebrows; it is typically found across all the US, but with larger populations along the east and west coasts.
• The Prairie is quite pale with light gray or gray-brown back, white undertail coverts with almost invisible dark streaking, almost no mustache, and thick white eyebrows; it is typically found in the central North America, from Canada down into Mexico, with some on the west coast.

And it gets better: Merlins cross-breed where their ranges overlap… which includes Texas for the Taiga and the Prairie. By their ranges, this bird would more likely be a Prairie, but its coloring makes me think it is a Taiga. And because the male is a bit more gray than brown, I’m thinking this is a female.

Adult Merlin “Taiga”, showing her mustache and long pointed wings
1/2500 f/6.3 ISO 1000
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

The Merlin is most often seen perched on a stout branch with a broad view of prairie grasses and nearby perches favored by other small birds. They eat some of the most abundant species of small birds, including pigeons, larks, sparrows, waxwings, sandpipers, dunlin, and other small shorebirds.

Merlins hunt by flying at high speed (making them very difficult to see), striking mostly in mid-air attacks. They may rush a group of birds on the ground to flush them into the sky, where their high speed allows them to single out prey and strike, often from beneath their target. All About Birds says that mated pairs have been observed hunting in teams, where one Merlin flushes a flock, and the other strikes the prey. They will take small mammals, reptiles, and even dragonflies, if their favored prey is scarce.

Merlin spots something interesting in the distance
1/2500 f/6.3 ISO 1000
Nikon D850 with Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR

I had been driving when I spotted her, and she patiently waited while I rolled forward, made a 3-point U-turn on the narrow road, then rolled back to where I could photograph her out my window. I clicked away for two full minutes, trying different settings to combat the moist air, thick with humidity, and the back-lighting. But eventually, she spotted something interesting behind and above me, and sped off for more interesting (or more appetizing) company.

I enjoyed this break in my sabbatical, seeing a familiar hunter showing off his goldfish-swallowing skills, and a hunter new to me, and hopefully, to be seen again in the fall, when she returns from her Canadian breeding grounds.