This morning I was standing around enjoying the sunny mild weather, not really paying attention to anything, when all the sudden this Merlin appeared out of nowhere and came straight towards me at a high rate of speed. It zoomed by only a few feet away from my head and landed beside a pond behind a small hill. I crept over the hill to get a better view of the Merlin and found it eyeing out the shallow water at the edge of the pond. I retreated back down the hill and hastily circled around to get on the better side of the light. I expected the Merlin would be gone by the time I circled around or take off when I came over the hill, but it was so fixated on the shallow water that I was able to get quite close without it even acknowledging my existence. The Merlin then started bathing and that’s when I caught this photo. The bathing lasted for a good three minutes and during that time I was able to get my video camera out of my bag and capture a short 20 second video clip (below). The video clip ends when the Merlin jumped out of the pond and onto the grass. When on the grass the Merlin shook its feathers dry and took off for a tall tree where it perched for a minute before disappearing off into the distance.