I have had a Northern Shrike patrolling my feeders for about a week now. I’ve seen him twice now pretty closely.  Also, he may have been responsible for mortally wounding a sparrow, but I scared it off before I really saw it, and a magpie came a minute later and claimed the poor victim. I’ve never known a magpie to attack a house sparrow, so I’m surmising that the shrike did the initial damage. Also. the magpies around here are so well fed that I doubt they would turn to birdicide.  Regardless, this is an excitement for me, being the first time I’ve had a shrike in my yard. 
  I’m 2 miles south of Ucon on Yellowstone highway, near Idaho Falls

google search for an older, May/June BIRDING article from the ABA journal by birder Steve Shunk. It describes and illustrates the ID issues in the hybrid saps. I think he gives definitive info. Cheers, Judy from Bend, Oregon, near hybrid zone where we see a lot of these mixed up sapsuckers. Jmeredit@…

I’ve been looking at these photos too and I think RL makes some
good points. I’m not sure how you go about ruling out a Red-naped
x Red-breasted hybrid, either with this individual or any other
daggetti-like individual. I’ve looked for ID info a number of
times and I still don’t know of a definitive source??? If anyone
has a suggestion I’d love to hear it. 

Cliff

RL….you may indeed be correct on this….Cindy and I had the exact
discussion. This one is out of our league….perhaps a hybrid. We’ll
wait for the experts on this one….

-- 
Cliff and Lisa Weisse
Island Park, Idaho
cliffandlisa@...

First of all great photo. Definitely a Merlin, notice the small notch in the upper mandible,  this is a falcon character not present in other birds of prey ruling out things like Sharp-shinned Hawks. Again congrats on the nice pictures 

RL….you may indeed be correct on this….Cindy and I had the exact discussion. This one is out of our league….perhaps a hybrid. We’ll wait for the experts on this one….

Immature Merlin

Great pics! Looks like a merlin to me.

—
Tom Soniville
Boise. North End

Hey there Boys and girls in ible-land.
Been studying and culling my not-so-good photos I took yesterday at Morris Hill Cem. here in Boise. Was very bothered. Then went back to the photos taken by others and posted on ebird. Then went into some research in the “Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of N.A.“, Stephen A. Shunk, 2016 (see photo on pg. 128 but esp. one on pg. 129). In other words, a lot of back-and-forthing. Be happy if anyone can correct me, but, I think maybe we’d better re-look at that called R-b sapucker, daggetti, a bit closer. The head appears to be way too much R-n sapsucker-ish in appearance. The black-and-white face continuing fadingly on the side of the head with just a hazy slash of red coming up thru and behind the eye. Even a daggetti should have more of a red head than I see in all the photos. There are a couple on ebird that show what appears to be some yellow on the upper breast. Could that indicate an imm. bird. Similar to HOFI’s where the imm. males show yellow where they will eventually have red? Just a thought or two, that as I said I earlier would be happy to be corrected about.
A Merry Happy Holidays to you all and Continued Good Birding. RL