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August 1999
The cry of
the merlin penetrated to my heart, "ki-ki-ki-ki-kee." Waves of
excitement, wonder and a primeval fear stirred in me, like ancient memories from
ancestral time. I watched the
female merlin, a small falcon formerly called the pigeon hawk, perched high on
the dead branch atop a silver maple tree.
The merlin was reacting to the approach of myself, Susan Hayward and
Charles Straub. In answer to the
merlin's cries, we heard a chorus of the same sounds, but smaller and immature,
coming from the tall spruce tree just before us.
The female merlin, known for her fierceness in defending her nest, saw us
as intruders.
The apparent irony of this wilderness episode was that we were in the
heart of Lewiston on College St. at Bates College.
Some observant people in the neighborhood had seen a pair of merlins who
stayed around and were assumed to be nesting. I asked Susan to take me there
and, knowing of his interest in ornithology, she invited her neighbor Dr. Straub
to meet us.
Because they are a rare species, and because of the location in an urban
residential area, we immediately asked ourselves how this could be.
Knowing that food, cover and water appropriate to a particular species
need to be present and in workable proximity, we analyzed the neighborhood in
those terms.
One block from the nest is a small wetland surrounded by thickets and
trees, on property belonging to the College for faculty housing.
This small area is rich in the staple of the merlins' diet, small birds. They also eat squirrels, mice, toads, snakes, dragonflies,
butterflies, moths, caterpillars and grasshoppers. Regularly of an evening, Susan had seen an adult merlin in a
tree adjacent to this little wetland, eating its prey. Most likely this was the male, who does all the hunting from
courtship through incubation, and sometimes right through the nestling period.
Merlins catch flying prey in mid-air, and eat it sitting on a perch.
The entire area is an open woodland habitat, with the large mature
landscape trees planted years ago in yards, along the streets and on the college
campus. This is perfect hunting
habitat for the merlin. They use
perches in their hunting as well as territory or nest defense, and dead branches
high in the maples in the area provide these.
Susan told me there had been no pigeons in the neighborhood for quite a
while.
Sources of water in the area are harder to identify.
Perhaps the wetland provides it, the pond on the college campus, small
streams we humans don't even notice, or even the river.
When their flight speed can reach more than thirty miles an hour, it
wouldn't take them long to reach the Androscoggin River just across town.
As migrants that come north to breed, merlins nest in open woodlands with
coniferous trees. The nest height
ranges from thirty-five to sixty feet and they use old crow's nests, adding bark
and feathers for the nest lining. We surmised this was the case here, but they
also nest in natural tree cavities, old woodpecker holes, or even sometimes on a
bare cliff ledge.
We stood back from the spruce, looking to its height of about seventy
feet. Suddenly, about ten feet from
the very top, we saw movement. Wings
were flapping. As we watched, we
counted five birds, including the female who flew in to join the brood. What a moment for us! We
had espied the nest. They all seemed as large as adults, and from their awkward bouncing high
in the branches and their flapping wings, they seemed almost ready to fledge.
Figuring backwards, we thought the eggs had been laid in the first part of May
and incubated for a month. The nestling period was another month and by early
July these young were ready to leave the nest and learn their survival skills
from their parents.
Next spring, we can expect the male to arrive to this same area to
establish the nest territory before being joined by the female.
They migrate along with flocks of small birds so as to sustain them with
food for the journey. I am sure the
neighborhood which quietly and protectively observed this most lovely
manifestation of city-as-ecosystem will look forward to next year's adventure.
From these experiences, we are confirmed in our knowledge that towns and cities, the urban forest ecosystem, can be a rich wildlife habitat capable of supporting a wide variety of species, even a family of this rare little falcon. This includes a diversity of vegetation in public and private spaces as well as wild or "waste" areas, such as the little wetland. Important too is the sense of stewardship, as in this neighborhood, where people keep their cats in when songbirds are fledging nearby. A healthy urban forest ecosystem provides the clean air, clean water and moderated temperatures that help create good habitat for humans as well as for wildlife. This is enlightened self-interest to act on the knowledge that all life needs a healthy environment to survive.
By Nancy Coverstone (ncstone@umext.maine.edu), University of Maine Extension Educator in Androscoggin and Sagadahoc Counties
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