They have small feet, but as written elsewhere, also have the strongest feet for their size. They will stoop into cover, chase birds on foot, bind to quarry twice their size and never let go voluntarily. Once committed to an attack, trained kestrels tend to follow through to the end. Position is paramount every advantage is considered and if available, used. A merlin can be almost anywhere at once.Īmerican kestrels, again much like red-tailed hawks, conserve energy in a hunt and pick slips with great care. A few seconds can bring her back to your pinned sparrows with no loss of vigor. Blackbirds balling up on the horizon can lure a hunting merlin half a mile into a pasture from a close chase at house sparrows along the fence. Merlins demonstrate total mastery of their element.Ī merlin boosts the energy of a hunt and also expands its range. The flock responds like bait fish to a barracuda and for precisely the same reason. One merlin can dominate an entire flock of frightened birds, directing its fate as a whole. It brings an ability to negate wind as a factor, to stay airborne at a tremendous clip then gear down further at any time for more performance. What a merlin gives you is raw power: lots of it. Comparing a red-tailed hawk to a Harris’ or goshawk will conjure equally negative points of fact, yet we all know how good trained red-tails can be! I say that with much affection for them and with thousands of kestrel kills to prove these are not necessarily damning differences. Kestrels are thin-winged, flat-chested, under-powered and lack acceleration compared to merlins. A low-altitude, clipping flight at feeding birds provides kestrels plenty opportunity to kill brief chases at flushed singles can follow these sneak attacks, but that’s about as far as most kestrels will pursue. They can, but it’s a tactic they rarely have to use. This is not to say that under some circumstances they can not catch small birds in direct pursuit. Although both species’ target quarries and captive husbandry overlap, their hunting styles and natural history sit at opposite ends of a spectrum.Īmerican kestrels hunt by ambush. From the falconer’s perspective, there are several important differences between American kestrels and merlins. A small, pale falcon flashing through a flock of cowbirds at a distance could be either of three species.īut serious birders, banders and experienced falconers should all be able to “tell a hawk from a handsaw” and a kestrel from a merlin with a quick glassing of binoculars. The constant wind and cold of the high plains mold local kestrels into hard flyers, and they hunt birds frequently. Some wintering kestrels are larger than jacks and almost as pale as prairie merlins. Kestrels are brightly-hued and merlins less so, but otherwise both are “small, buoyant falcons, easy to confuse.”Īnd sometimes this is true: In the Texas panhandle, for example, where wintering American kestrels and merlins of two subspecies (plus prairie falcons) all share the same sky, it can take a careful look to tell one from another. By Matt Mullenix, (C) 2003, Baton Rouge, LAĪccording to some bird guides, there is little difference between a merlin and a kestrel beyond color.
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