doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Happy 2024

It's a shame you didn't bring your E.M Reilly shotgun along. You could have shot that "Merlin" and then invited the lady over for a nice Southern fried "Merlin" dinner... followed by a lively discussion about the unabridged conjecture and history of the E.M. Reilly Co.

Then her life would really be complete! Not sporting to shoot "Merlins" perched in a tree though.

I'm sure the bird on the top of the dead tree is the Merlin.



I have a soft spot in my heart for Falcons and Hawks. My close friend from Karachi days Jerry Anderson (well known on carpet boards - now deceased) in the mid 1970's trained, manned and sold Peregrins and Saker falcons to Arab Sheikhs during the hunting seasons in Pakistan. Here he is with a Saker. I once sat for 3 hours with one of his wren falcons on my wrist "manning him." She flew and when I tapped a piece of meat on the glove she came at full speed from a hundred yards and landed softly. It was like having a cruise missile in your hand.



and since they have a SxS weapon (talons) this is apt for the board. And I'm thinking the "Wren Falcon" I manned in Pakistan was in fact a Merlin also known as a Pigeon Falcon.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Merlin/overview#

Merlins are widespread, particularly in migration and winter, but seeing them is unpredictable. They have two modes: scanning open areas patiently from a treetop, and cruising at top speed in pursuit of small birds.

https://www.merlinfalconry.com/training-merlins

Stanton, they will hunt doves for you.

Interesting post Gene, thanks for that.

A very interesting hawk to watch in my neck of the woods is the Harrier. Their ability to hover, with the wind in their face and providing lift, is amazing to watch. The Marine Corps fighter jet, which a VTOL aircraft, is justly named for this hawk. Their flight is seemingly effortless. Another type that I enjoy watching, when they migrate through here in the late spring, is the Mississippi and Swallow-Tailed Kite(s).

I and convinced, after a lifetime in the fields and woods observing raptors, that no commonly seen hawk is as efficient in catching it's prey as the Sharp-Shinned Hawk (Blue Darter) and it's closely related family of smaller, woods dwelling hunters like the Cooper's Hawk. I have been sitting in my truck in the edge of a field watching wild quail feeding on the field edge, or border, and had a Blue darter come from behind me at top speed, right over the roof of my pickup, and nail a hapless quail in a cloud of feathers. Big hawks like Red-Tails miss their prey very often, but the smaller ones I mentioned are so maneuverable in flight that almost nothing can escape them. They also prey heavily on songbirds, IME. I often see a pitiful Towhee or Cardinal desperately trying to escape a Blue darter by flying at full speed through the tree limbs, dodging and jiving, but the BD will inevitably be within 6 ft. behind it matching every turn. The outcome is almost always not good for the songbird.

Agree with everything you say about the Cooper's hawk and it's relatives, Stan. I watched a Cooper's or Sharp-Shinned (hard to differentiate sometimes) catch a cardinal in my neighbor's yard years ago. It was quick. The SS is smaller, but when in action, the two can look very similar.
JR

Peregrines move through the lowcountry heading south in October, and mostly seen on the coast. Two dove seasons ago, while sitting in a dove field, a Peregrine zipped through the center of the field and perched in pine on the field edge, In a minute or two it pursued a dove but couldn't catch it. Not much of a match in level flight to catch a dove, it earns its chops as the fastest living creature by striking prey in a towering stoop, accelerating to 250 mph. In the same field, 'Floyd has witnessed such stoop with a Peregrine blasting unaware doves while perched on an electric line. Apparently done for sport, it never returned to eat the dead birds. My youngest brother in law, while working on a post graduate degree from UGA in biology, lived on Cumberland Island trapping bobcats for study and while there once sat in a blind in the sand dunes with another man who was studying Peregrines. In the dunes was tethered a live pigeon with numerous mono loops attached to its body. Peregrines attacked the tethered pigeon and became entangled in the loops. The ornithologist weighed, drew a blood sample, banded and released the po'd bird afterwards. Gil

It depends on what the bird evolved to eat.

There are hawks that primarily eat other birds, Cooper’s sharpshinned, Merlin’s, falcons, etc.

And there are birds that evolved to eat vermin.

Their wings are shaped different, they fly different, and where, and when you see them is different.

Many of the places I work set up Perigren falcon nesting sites, to suppress pigeon infestations. It works great. I get to see them swooping around and calling, all day long.

Back to the original topic,

I hope that 2024 is healthy and prosperous and everyone gets to play with their toys as much as they would like, for all the members of the double gum bulletin board.

Since we've wandered from Happy New Year to Falcons, I'd like to make one last off-the-cuff comment on landscape photography. For the low-lands, marshes, grass prairies of the east coast especially Florida, Georgia, and NC, the quintessential "horizontal landscapes," I sort of take the advice of the "Luminists" a 19th century school of landscape painters which wasn't really a school, just a body of knowledge. . .Emphasize the sky, low horizon - 1/3rd or less of the painting, and try to have some small human scale element in the foreground to give it relevance (This from 19th century landscape prints.)

Martin Heade is my favorite painter and in the mid 1880's he moved to Saint Augustine and became "Florida's painter". This is my favorite "The Great Florida Sunset" 4' x 8' plus - it used to be in the Flagler Hotel in Saint Augustine but now resides in Winona, Minnesota in a museum which paradoxically houses some of the great paintings of the 19th and 20th century. (In a Boy Scout camp in 1959 we had to swim a mile across the Saint John's and knowledge of that country maybe led me to Vietnam).