Backyard Bird Viewing

We have a couple of feeders up in the backyard and the birdies have been hitting them pretty hard over the past couple of weeks as the temperatures have been dropping. Mostly we have lotsa sparrows, mourning doves, grackles, and such... but we occasionally get visitors such as cardinals and tufted titmice.

With all of the songbirds hanging around, it was really just a matter of time before one of these was attracted by all that prey:

A merlin, which is a type of falcon becoming increasingly more present in urban areas. He or she was just hangin' out on the fence, checking out the scene. Very cool! (BTW, The Man is convinced that it is a red-tailed hawk. Note that this bird (a) does not have a red tail and (b) is too small to be a red-tailed hawk. And let us not forget that (c) I am the naturalist of the house. So there.)