I birded Richards Park (north end of Ottawa Street south of the Cobb Plant) and the Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve this morning.
Colors were gorgeous at Richards where 15 bird species included White-throated Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, and a dark falcon (juvenile American Kestrel or Merlin -- see comments) staring at me from a distant pole) ...
...plus this Monarch butterfly in poor condition for a flight to Mexico:
Of the 17 bird species at the nature preserve, Zonotrichia sparrows (White-throated and White-crowned) were frequent along the trails, including both colors (adult and juvenile) of the White-crowned's:
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- Ric
The falcon flew to a telephone pole more than 100 yards south of me as I was near the north end of the pond. For an instant I was hoping peregrine, but it was too small, so I figured kestrel. I took a hand-held picture from there, then walked east to the edge of the road where there was a light structure to steady the camera, hoping I wouldn't spook the bird by walking over there. I didn't, so I snapped this image. The sun was behind the bird and in camera and in binocular there was no detail, just a silhouette a long way away. When I got home and zoomed the first image, it was very blurry but showed vertical dark-white-dark on the face (kestrel). When I saw that this image was sharper, I deleted the first. Then after downloading and seeing this image on the computer monitor, I thought Merlin! But I "knew" from the first image that it was a kestrel. Hmmm. After kicking myself for deleting the first image, I Googled scores of images of immature American Kestrels to see if any could look like this. What bothered me most was the thickness of the striping on the body. But a few of the Google images showed striping as thick, so I posted kestrel. But it sure looks like a Merlin! So I've re-posted it as unidentified falcon and would like to hear from anyone if there's anything definitive in this poor image to prove it's one or the other. Thanks!
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