Kestrels and Merlins, the Small Fast Ones
Okay, so we've spent this whole module on the big soaring hawks, the ones that give you time to get your binoculars up and really look. This lesson's the opposite of that. Kestrels and merlins are small, they're fast, and they will not wait around for you. That's the whole lesson, honestly. Learning to catch something before it's gone.
Both of these are falcons, not hawks, and falcons have a different build than what we've been looking at. Pointed wings instead of broad ones. Longer tail, narrower body. If a red-tail is built like a school bus, a falcon is built like something with better gas mileage. You'll notice the wingbeats are quicker and choppier too, not those slow lazy flaps a red-tail does. Once you've seen it a few times you start to recognize falcon flight before you even get the binoculars up, which is really the whole point of this class if I'm honest with myself.
The American kestrel
This is our smallest falcon and probably the one you'll see most. Robin-sized, sometimes a little bigger. Rusty orange back, blue-gray wings on the male, and if you get a good look you'll see two black marks on the face people call "sideburns." I think that's a strange way to describe a bird's face, but it works, so I use it.
Kestrels do a thing no other bird out here really does, which is hover. They'll hang in one spot over a field, wings working hard, tail fanned, looking straight down at the ground. They're hunting mice and voles this way, and it's honestly one of my favorite things to watch because it looks like so much effort for a bird that weighs about as much as a deck of cards.
Where to look: fence posts, power lines, the tops of dead trees along the edges of open fields. Kestrels like a perch with a view. If you see a small bird sitting very upright on a wire, pumping its tail up and down every so often, that's very likely your kestrel. That tail pump is a good tell even at a distance when the color's washed out.
The merlin
Merlins are the ones that'll get your heart going a little, because they're built for speed and they use it. Bigger than a kestrel, smaller than a crow, dark overall, no hovering, no patience. A merlin flies like it's late for something. Low, fast, straight lines, and if it spots a flock of small birds it'll just go through them, trying to pick one off mid-air.
I saw this happen once out by the lake, a merlin coming in low over a flock of shorebirds, and the whole flock did that thing where they bank together like one animal trying to get away from a predator. Didn't work that time. That's nature, and it's not always comfortable to watch, but I think it's worth watching anyway. You learn something about why birds do the things they do, flocking up the way we talked about a few lessons back, once you've seen what's hunting them.
Telling them apart
Here's my practical version, the one I use at 8am when my brain isn't fully working yet:
- Size and shape first. Kestrel is small and almost dainty-looking. Merlin is stockier, darker, more like it's wearing a leather jacket.
- Behavior second. If it's hovering, it's a kestrel, full stop, nothing else around here hovers like that. If it's flying fast and low with intent, think merlin.
- Perching. Kestrels like an open perch and will sit still for a while, tail pumping. Merlins don't sit as long. They're on the move.
This is the opinion I keep repeating in this class and I'll repeat it again here: learn shape and behavior before you worry about color. Out on the flats at 8am the light's bad, everything looks gray-brown, and color will lie to you. But nothing else hovers like a kestrel. Nothing else flies through a flock like a merlin. Behavior doesn't lie the way color does.
A practical thing to try at home
Before you're even out on the trail, this is a good one to practice from your car or your porch. Watch any bird that's flying and ask yourself just one question: is it working hard, or is it coasting? Falcons work hard, wingbeats are constant and a little frantic. Hawks coast more, they'll flap a few times then glide. It sounds too simple to be useful but it's the fastest way I know to sort a bird into the right family before you've even seen a field mark.
I think about my mother sometimes when I'm out there doing this. She never looked at a bird on purpose in her whole life, not once that I know of. If she'd been standing next to me watching a kestrel hover over a fence post she would've been polite about it for maybe ninety seconds and then asked when we were getting lunch. She'd have thought this was a strange way for a grown woman to spend a morning. She might've been right about that. I'm out there anyway, most weeks, for four winters now.
One real caution here: if you're watching a falcon hunt near a road, and you will be, because the fence lines along the road are exactly where kestrels like to perch, keep your eyes up as much as on the bird. It's an easy way to end up half in the road with your binoculars up and a car coming. I've caught myself doing this. Don't.
Before next time
See if you can spot a kestrel on a wire before we meet, they're common enough you probably don't have to try very hard. Watch it for a minute if you can and see whether that tail pumps. That's your homework, and it's a low key one.