Adult Male Prairie Merlin At Bear River MBR
One of the birds I photographed yesterday at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was an adult male Prairie Merlin that I spotted on a fence post close to the road.
One of the birds I photographed yesterday at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was an adult male Prairie Merlin that I spotted on a fence post close to the road.
Last week I spotted a Merlin perched on a large wooden post way out in the marsh at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in northern Utah.
In my experience Merlins are already hard to find in the state of Utah but because of our climate crisis they could become even more difficult to locate or they might even disappear from the state altogether.
There isn't a single day in the field where I take my eyesight and my keen spotting abilities for granted and yesterday those attributes netted me not one but two Merlins while I was at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
I spotted my first of the season Merlin yesterday morning out on the flats at Farmington Bay yesterday morning and it truly delighted me.
Last September I was able to observe and photograph a Merlin in southwestern Montana over a period of several days.
I don't often have the opportunity to photograph Merlins so I was plenty excited to find one yesterday on the South Valley Road in the Centennial Valley that stuck around for a bit!
I saw a fleeting glimpse of a bird a few days ago that I suspect was a Merlin that migrated to winter here in Utah and it inspired me to post a few Merlin images today.
Just a short Merlin post today from my Montana trip, a teaser for the images I will soon be posting.
Merlins are winter visitors in the Salt Lake Valley so I have just a few more weeks to attempt photographing them. Merlins are used to be called "pigeon hawks" because their shape and flight patterns are similar to pigeons.