Hello all,

I just had a flyover of 3 birds chasing each other that were making a call
that sounds *very* much like the first recording on this species account
for Merlin from Cornell's site:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Merlin/sounds

However they were doing it a little longer than the call in the recording.
My husband and I heard them first when we were eating dinner in our yard,
but didn't see them at that time. I remarked (again without seeing them)
that I thought they were either some kind of shorebird (which seems very
unlikely in our part of Kenmore - on Finn Hill about 1 mi from St. Ed's) or
a small raptor. When I listened to recordings of cooper's and
sharp-shinned, it was definitely not one of those based on the call at
least.

I finally saw the 3 birds just now and I am 98% convinced they are merlins,
which would be a first for my "yard" (they of course didn't stop, but I
spotted them from the yard!) but I have a lot of self-doubt about ID'ing
raptors especially when only given a quick look. Does this seem likely?
They had pointed wings and were small, I'd say a bit smaller than a crow,
and definitely lots of dark spotting/streaking on their breast/under wings.
Tails looked shorter than a cooper's or sharp-shinned. Apologies if I'm
using poor terminology, I haven't learned all the proper field mark
terminology yet. :)

Wish I'd somehow gotten a picture so I could send that along. I don't know
how much regional variation there is in this species' calls, but again, it
sounded almost exactly like the first recording on the All About Birds
account for Merlin, just longer.

sincerely,
Emily Birchman
Kenmore, WA
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