Mr. Falcon

He came back. Or she. Whatev'. It's the merlin. And this time, I took pictures. Mainly because Quickdraw McGraw (daughter of mine) said "get the camera". So, this is the merlin that came looking for more sparrows to eat in our neighbor's yard. You can see the bird perched on the trellis, eyeing our neighbor's suet feeder. What you don't see are sparrows. Hmmmm. This is the merlin closer up. I apologize for the poor quality, but at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and not wanting to risk scaring the bird away, I took these through a double door. With rain/snow spots.

I just had to share that I was not delusional about seeing this bird in our yard! It flew to the tree by our bird seed feeder, then flew down toward the ground and vanished.

In other news, we were looking at the tracks in the snow, and what looked like this scenario. Please note that it is entirely fictional and supposition, but entirely, mostly, sort of plausible:

A rabbit was running around, making tracks. A hawk or owl (I think a merlin is too small) swooped out of the evergreens and picked up the rabbit, who was screaming its tiny rabbit scream by now, and took off in the early morning light.

I drew a picture to help you. I love scanners.

If I had any skills in MS Paint, I could have made this much more believable, but you just have to use your imagination. If that is limited, then I can't help you. Sorry. I have never held myself out as a drawing artist. Note the absence of tracks to the right of the miniature snow angel. For a long ways. At least going in the correct direction. You can draw your own conclusions if you like. I'm sticking with the raptor story.