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.