Pocono Record, PA –
John Serrao
Poconos Outdoors
August 12, 2014
This story is mostly about a bird, but it also concerns the birder who discovered it, resulting in the first historical record of this species nesting in the Poconos.
The bird was found completely by serendipity, yet if anyone is likely to make such an accidental discovery, it’s Rick Wiltraut, who has become famous throughout Pennsylvania’s birding community as the man who makes a habit of finding rare birds in unexpected places.
The bird in this case is the merlin, a small, speedy northern falcon which, until last year, was known in our state almost exclusively as a fall migrant that passed through en route from Canada to points far to the south.
In early summer, while driving in Promised Land State Park, Rick glimpsed a falcon in flight. Stopping to investigate more closely, he discovered an entire family of merlins nesting in a white pine just off the road, adjacent to a clearing.
It was only last summer that the first state records of breeding merlins were confirmed in western Pennsylvania, in Warren and McKean counties. Rick’s discovery represents the first breeding merlins in this entire region.
What makes this story so exciting is the amazingly sudden appearance of this falcon in the northeastern United States. The merlin is primarily a Canadian bird, breeding around bogs, coniferous forest openings, alpine meadows and boreal wetlands. In the eastern states, it’s been known to birders mostly as a fall migrant, passing swiftly by hawk lookouts on it’s way to the Gulf States, Mexico, the West Indies, or northern South America for the winter months.
In the DDT era, merlin populations suffered drastic reductions along with their close relative, the peregrine falcon. But recent years have seen dramatic increases in numbers of merlins migrating past autumn lookouts, hinting that they have recovered in Canada and the species is experiencing a population expansion. Sure enough, 100 merlin nests were found throughout the upstate New York last year — 25 years ago, there were none.
Rick Wiltraut is an environmental educator at Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, near Wind Gap, and he serves on the seven-member Pennsylvania Ornithological Records Committee, which studies, documents, and verifies all records of our state’s birds. His passion is birds — not just identifying and listing them, but studying and observing their behavior.
When my wife, Felicia, and I met him at Promised Land on the last day of July (alerted to the merlins’ location by both Rick and Brian Hardiman, another extraordinary local birder — see announcement at end of column) he had already been stationed there with his binoculars and spotting scope for several hours, watching the four young merlins perched side by side on a dead branch in the top of a tree.
The fledglings had left the nest (probably an old crow or hawk nest — merlins don’t build their own nests) just a few days before, after being fed there by their parents for about a month, following an incubation period of another month. Rick had observed the adult male merlin delivering barn swallows to the female, who in turn fed them to the noisy, hungry babies. Now, these babies were taking their inaugural flights, and already they exhibited the breathtaking speed and maneuverability for which this falcon is famous.
We watched in awe as they left their perch and zoomed in dizzying circles over the trees, shrieking at a soaring turkey vulture that dared to invade their space.
With a 2-foot wing span and 12-inch body length, a merlin is considerably smaller than a peregrine and only a bit larger than our smallest falcon, the kestrel, although it is much heavier and bulkier than the latter. Females are larger then males, and lack the slate-blue backs of their mates. Both sexes have dark tails with prominent crossbars, heavily streaked underparts, and short, yellow legs and feet. Like all falcons, merlins have long, pointed wings and tapered, bullet-shaped bodies for powerful flight.
The merlin’s speed is legendary — it was once used in falconry in Europe, where it’s also a northern breeder. Just imagine how fast a predator has to be in order to capture a barn swallow or bat in flight. Merlins will often burst into pursuit of passing birds from a perch in a tree, or ambush sandpipers on a beach or mudflat from behind the cover of shrubs. They’ve also been known to follow harriers (marsh hawks) flying over fields and marshes and grab songbirds scared from cover by the much larger hawks. Merlins are also frequently seen snatching large dragonflies from the air as they migrate south. At the other extreme, they prey upon pigeons, too — in fact, an old name “pigeon hawk,” and the scientific name is Falco columbarius, pigeon falcon, based on their swift, direct flight.
It wasn’t more than a few years ago that a Pennsylvania outdoor writer described his encounter with a merlin as “a glimpse of the distant frozen north.” Today, that situation has changed, and the merlin has suddenly become a member of Pennsylvania’s forest and wetland communities. Thanks to people like Rick Wiltraut, the birders and other outdoor enthusiasts of our state can look forward to being informed about more such happy occurances in the future.
Announcement: Brian Hardiman will be leading a trip to Trinidad for the Monroe County Environmental Education Center from Jan. 12-19, 2014. My wife and I accompanied Brian on this same adventure two years ago and saw more than 150 species of tropical birds, as well as butterflies, exotic wildflowers and trees, beautiful tropical scenery, wonderful people and much more. It’s a trip we’ll never forget. Call Brian at the center, (570) 629-3061 for more details.