While driving not far from home camera hunting for winter raptors this morning, I happened upon a male Merlin on a utility wire. It was a first of life species for my birding albums. Turned out to be a special near year's end prize for this 76 year old dude who has been camera chasing birds since 1972.

These are portraits of the small hawk in the share.

Jonathan

Beautiful birds those hawks. Congratulations.

They are one of the smallest falcons, thanks for posting!

We've had one of those for over a year now. I call him sparrow hawk since he cleaned up a lot of English sparrows.
When he hits a mourning dove, it's high speed, low drag, poooof lol.

Those morning dove sure loose a lot of feathers when hit by a hawk or falcon. I think Kestrels used to be called sparrow hawk, but they to are falcons. Outstanding looking little falcons.

Nice. I've seen them catch tree swallows before. They are incredibly fast little falcons

great pics, thanks for posting

Wonderful life list addition for your album , Jonathan .

Thank you for the share of such a speedy jet fighter

See you on the surface.....

Kestrels were called sparrow hawks back when I was a kid Merlin’s were called pigeon hawks

There awesome hunters well able to catch and take down larger game then most would expect

Great Photos Jonathan!

I and a friend saw one catch a bluejay this fall in the yard. The other bluejays went crazy when it was screaming.

I love hawks. A small cooper hawk has been coming around my neighborhood lately, it's refreshing. Some odd reason I've hardly seen the adult cooper hawk that usually visits once a week, then this young guy started showing up. Neighbor said it takes out doves and pigeons in his yard.

Very nice Jonathan. A glamorous predator and exciting addition to a life list. Our winter "raptor" around here is the Northern Hawk Owl, an interesting bird of prey with falcon-like wings. Perhaps it should've been named "Northern Falcon Owl. I wish I had a picture to share. Please keep it up.

Great shot Jonathan ….

Garry-

Way to go, Jonathan.

Great shots and congrats on the find.

One of my favorite birding sites:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Merlin

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Kestrel

Great shots. I’ve had one at my deer stand picking off sparrows from the corn feeder. I almost posted about it last night. He’s a killing machine, and sometimes it appears to be just for fun. Yesterday he nailed 3 in a row, but took two about 70 yards out and just dropped them then came back to his perch. I’ve never seen a bird of prey kill for fun. We call them pigeon hawks

Wonderful pictures.

Kestrels and Merlins are unique birds of prey in the falcon family within our group of hawks. The looks and actions of both species are nearly identical and can be a challenge to identify, unless you are able to see their plumage marking differences to sort them out accordingly with confidence. The Kestrels are in fact smaller.

I only see them while driving down the road sitting on the wires. If spotted far enough in advance, I can slow down and ease into a stop and attempt to grab a shot from my Jeep's open window. They are tough targets to photograph. As you can tell by the dates on the photos below, I don't get lucky very often.

These photos of the American Kestrel are added for reference. The species is commonly seen and more abundant in my area than the Merlin.

Jonathan

Merlins are deadly killers. I was trapping along a beach late one fall when they were migrating south. I saw 14 of them perching on low snags near the beach and 11 of them were picking apart small birds. They allowed me to get pretty close to them. I am guessing that where they spend the majority of their life, there aren't a lot of people around.