Nestlings may have fledged, but Merlins still have to eat and hunt. Yesterday (Monday 27 July) at 9:32am I was on Meadow Street waiting to turn left onto Buffalo Street by the FastRack gas station when I heard a short succession of unidentified agitated call notes to my left. Immediately afterward I saw a MERLIN carrying small prey and flying from near the source of the sound, proceeding northeast low over Joe's Restaurant, across Meadow Street, then lost to view among treetops. Was the nest by the Finger Lakes Land Trust office successful? That's the direction it went. I don't know whether the sound was from the Merlin, its prey, its prey's parent, or another witness.

By the way, I haven't noticed an actual shortage of House Sparrows yet, and to me Merlins seem like a good trade for them so far.
--Dave Nutter

On Jul 28, 2015, at 09:22 AM, John Confer <con...@ithaca.edu> wrote:

Thanks to assistance from participants in the cayugabirds-l, Mark Witmer, Maddie Ulinski, and I were able to monitor 7 Merlin nests this spring-summer. The Briarwood Lane nest fledged the third of three nestlings this morning (28 July). Five nests were in Ithaca, one in Dryden and one of Wells College campus. Three of the nests were predated. Although this is a statistically tiny sample, it provides a very high rate of nest failure in comparison to other, large surveys. The dominant prey species at all nests was the House Sparrow. Interestingly, House Sparrows have been declining very rapidly, a decline that started long before Merlin started to nest and increase in abundance in New York.

It is nice to have our little urban falcon zipping around the town/city, picking off a lot of species but mostly House Sparrows.

Thanks again for directing us to nest locations.

John, Mark, and Maddie
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