Rare roost

A pair of falcons put Colville on the birdwatching map this summer. Two merlins, among the smaller of the falcon species that breed in North America, not only made a rare appearance in northeastern Washington, they set up house in the Colville City Park.

“We had a great summer watching them,” said Chris Loggers, a wildlife biologist for the Colville National Forest. “This appears to be the first known nest in Washington east of the Cascades, and it was just four blocks from our house.”

Loggers and his family weren’t the only ones enjoying the summer residents. Birding Web sites and telephone hotlines spread the news and attracted birders from around the region to come and watch the pair raise their three chicks.

The chicks fledged 25-30 days after they hatched, but the changes were graphic between July 1 and July 13 as they transformed from white fluff balls to flight-ready, said Spokane photographer Tom Munson.

“It’s unbelievable how fast they grow,” he said, after making a couple of trips north to photograph the historic event.

Warren Current, a birder and retired Forest Service employee, said the merlins were nesting more than twice as high as normal — about 80 feet up a spruce tree — probably borrowing an old crow’s nest, as they’re known to do.

The adult birds often hunted in the park, nabbing smaller birds in the air and perching on power poles or even the tennis court lights as they plucked their prey.

“The merlins were hell on the starlings and swallows, but I wish they were large enough to prey on crows,” said Loggers, referring to the scattering of garbage and the loud, obnoxious, behavior to which the black scavengers are prone as they invade city neighborhoods.

“Just having them around cleared out the crows and it was nice not having Heckle and Jeckle making all that noise outside the office window,” said Todd Booth, a Colville City Parks employee.

The merlin’s 2-foot wing-span is larger than a kestrel but much smaller than a peregrine falcon. Merlins feed primarily on birds they nab in the air, but also on big bugs. They have a notable fondness for dragonflies.

Perhaps that figures somehow into the mix of reasons the merlins settled this summer in the Colville area.

“Northeastern Washington apparently supports a great diversity of dragonflies because of the various habitats from near-desert to alpine,” said Loggers, noting that dragonfly experts from around the region came to the area for a field trip last week.

But the Colville merlins seemed content to hunt around town with an unusual disregard for all the people around them.

“I’m used to seeing red-tailed hawks around, but I knew these were different when I saw them, and they were flying over and over into the same place across from my house,” said Marilyn Haney, owner of Haney Lumber in Colville.

Once the chicks hatched, she said they woke her with their squawking every morning at about 5:15.

“Pretty soon I would look out and the birdwatchers would be there at 5:15 a.m., too,” she said.

Once the birds fledged, the parents would leave their food on power poles and make the youngsters find it, she said.

“I saw a pair of pigeon feet tangling from a pole one morning and sure enough the young ones came to feed on it,” she said, adding that she noticed an obvious pecking order.

“The biggest one always got there first and the littlest one stayed away until the others were done and got what was left.” Female falcons are bigger than the males.

The smallest chick bathed under the spray of her garden sprinkler one morning and later sprung from a perch under her eaves and swooped so close she felt its feathers brush her ears.

“He was still wet from bathing and couldn’t fly very well,” she said.

Starting around the 14th century, when falconry became entrenched in the English aristocracy, merlins had a sweet spot in the “sport of kings.”

Gyrfalcons at that time could be owned only by royalty, peregrines by high noblemen. Short-winged hawks such as goshawks were classified for the owners of land and the clergy.

The merlin’s daintiness and relative easiness to train, made it the bird flown by noblewomen.

People who watched the Colville merlins this summer could pick up the gray-jay-like habit of flying low over the ground toward a post, then suddenly spreading their tails and wings and swooping straight up to perch.

Merlins fly faster and stronger than the smaller kestrels that can be seen regularly feeding on mice in Palouse wheat fields. Merlins hunt open spaces. They might be seen flying high occasionally, although they rarely soar or stoop.

Generally, they are the Darth Vaders of the sky, overtaking their prey in a level 30-45 mph sprint that often finishes with abrupt turns and a meal in their talons.

Merlins are an independent lot, and the Colville family unit has already started to scatter, although at least a couple of the chicks were still in the area last week.

The adults are probably back to their solitary ways as they work south for the winter, perhaps as far as South America.

“I know they’re gone because the crows and songbirds are showing up again,” Haney said. “I had a lot of feathers in my back yard this summer, but there was a serious lack of living birds.”