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Merlin : Merlin Qiirayuli This hawk may not look as sexy as its cousins the Peregrine falcon and Gyrfalcon, and it certainly isn't the speeding bullet they are. You also won't see it except during the summer in the taiga forest of the YK Delta. But it is a fascinating bird in its own right. It takes the scientific name Falco columbarius because it has hook-shaped (falcate) claws, and because in Europe where it was given this name its prey included pigeons (columbarius). This is why seven of its common English monikers include pigeon hawk as part of the name. There is no question why it's not called pigeon hawk in the YK Delta. There are no pigeons there, unless someone has recently imported a few into Bethel. In the Delta this falcon takes the same name as the Peregrine falcon, Qiirayuli, because of the sound it makes, qi qi qi qi qee, when it rushes to meet an intruder. Its new common English name Merlin comes straight out of Arthurian legends from the Middle Ages of jolly old England. Remember Merlin the magician and prophet who advised Arthur from his home in the woods? Whoever named this bird Merlin was right on. For starters, it likes open woodland like the taiga of the YK Delta, and what's more I believe some of its behavior is truly magical. Watch it fly low over the ground toward a dead tree or stump, suddenly spread its tail and wings, then bound straight up to perch and light on top. Watch it as it hunts low over the ground, then when it spots a smaller bird, veers, picks up speed, swiftly overtakes it and plucks it out of midair with its talons. It will do the same with dragonflies, which it eats on the wing. Although the male falcon returns to the nesting ground before the female, usually the same pair comes back to the same general area to breed each year. And though they are already bonded from previous years, they still go through the same courtship mating dance. In this, the male verges on being magical when he performs his spectacular flight displays, with steep dives, slipping glides, powerful twists and tight rolls from side to side, finally fluttering with shallow wingbeats like a moth at night. During this performance the female watches him as she wings lazily round and round in the thin air or perches on a nearby dead tree or rock outcrop. Quite often these aerial acrobatics end up with the male lighting beside his mate and feeding her some tasty morsel he just caught. She never refuses. All this sounds familiar, doesn't it? -a little like some of our own human antics. Mating and nesting occur very soon after the acrobatics since the pair simply take over an abandoned nest of a raven, hawk or owl in a tree, on a cliff ledge or even on the ground. Sometimes the female relines the nest with twigs and feathers before she lays her eggs, but Merlins mostly focus on the pragmatic rather than the pretty. After laying 4-5 reddish brown spotted eggs, the female is helped by the male during the month long incubation period. After bringing his mate the food, he incubates the eggs while she eats. Even after the eggs hatch the female remains with the young, brooding them when they are small while her mate hunts for the whole family. When he flies in with the food, the female takes it from him near the nest and feeds it to the young. Only when the nestlings are older will their mother leave them and help hunt for their food. Because females are bigger than males they usually bring back more to eat for the young. A final unique quality of the Merlin is that yearling birds, especially males, occasionally help their parents the following year defend their nesting territory, and sometimes even help feed their mothers while they are incubating eggs on the nest. Now, that's magic, don't you think? » List of Yupik Birds

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