Here in the central Columbia Basin Merlins are a migratory bird. Most of the time when I see them with prey it is RWBL (Red-winged Blackbird) sized. Far and away their favorite prey in my neighborhood in Moses Lake are European Starlings. I always get a guiltless smile when I see a Merlin perched on a pole with a starling. When I watch murmurations of starlings it is almost always a Merlin that is creating the organized chaos. They fly lazily around the murmuration until someon makes a mistake. A single starling and a single Merlin almost always spells mealtime. I unashamedly root for the Merlin.
I've had Merlins take a variety of birds off of my feeders. Everything from House Sparrows (yahoo!) to juncos and white-crowns. The most memorable was when 5 Eurasian Collared Doves were sitting on the fence in a nice neat row. As I watched them suddenly there were 4. The 4 that were left never even left their perches (though they fluttered around a bit wondering what in the world just happened). All that was left of the 5th bird was a few feathers drifting in the breeze. To be honest even I didn't know what had happened. Then I saw the Merlin perched on a small power pole with the freshly killed dove. He had used the momentum of his strike to reach the top of the power pole with his prize and was now consuming lunch. I often wonder if a Merlin could actually fly with a dove without using that momentum to reach his preferred perch.
