One of my favorite birds… one that I think is indeed surrounded in something quite mystical… made a wonderful appearance today at Lake Hefner. The Merlin returned!!! ![](\"http:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/blog\/merlin8-15.jpg\")
I literally jumped out of my car and quickly set up my spotting scope on a muddy road when I caught that first unexpected glimpse of him sitting in the same tree, in the same spot as last year. I spent so much time last winter watching this small falcon, a somewhat rare visitor to my birding route around Lake Hefner, that I he grew quite comfortable with me setting up my tripod very close to his perch. What a great bird!<\/p>\n
Last year, the Merlin arrived — or at least was first spotted — on August 29. This year his arrival is two weeks ahead of schedule. Here’s hoping he finds adequate prey and stays for another winter.<\/p>\n
Today’s brief birding trip to Hefner brought another fun surprise: a Yellow-crowned Night Heron within 10 feet of my truck as I drove along the golf course road. I’ve wanted to get better pictures of this interesting night heron and have been concerned that the summer would pass without a chance to photograph one. I wasn’t finding them anywhere at Hefner and the ones I found at Rose Lake in Yukon were perched too far away to photograph. The bird I discovered today was very patient and posed quite gracefully for me. And he was so close that I had to zoom back to photograph his whole body. Some of the pictures turned out nice and I’ll be posting them in the Photo Gallery later this week.<\/p>\n
After a weekend of (much needed) rain, today’s 80-degree temperature made for an unusually mild August day for Oklahoma. I’ll take it!!!<\/p>\n
Happy birding,<\/p>\n
Pat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite birds… one that I think is indeed surrounded in something quite mystical… made a wonderful appearance today at Lake Hefner. The Merlin returned!!! I literally jumped out of my car and quickly set up my spotting scope on a muddy road when I caught that first unexpected glimpse of him sitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbirdcam.com\/birdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}