January 8, 2026

BREAKING NEWS BOTD UPDATE

Still in beta and already a catastrophic misidentification. In this way I bring you the unfiltered Sara Kate experience: confident pronouncements, followed hard upon by mortified backpedaling.

In my defense, I've only ever seen one once before, and that was in profile and in a wildlife refuge. Furthermore...nope, no excuses, a shameful failure on my part. I specifically mentioned the crazy eye, which Cooper's hawks do not have! I blew it.

Thank GOD I started a website. I need to be educated. Onward and upward.

Where: the neighborhood

When: 3:30pm

Bird Species: American crow, fish crow, house sparrow, downy woodpecker, house finch, mourning dove, mockingbird, European starling, American robin, northern mockingbird, decidedly not a peregrine fucking falcon

Things I Thought About:

• I’m never going to see that bird again. I’m for sure not going to see it at 4 in the afternoon, but I’ll look every morning for the rest of my life, I guess. The same way I look for a barred owl every time I pass the place on the CCT where I saw my first one.
• Now that the maintenance crew cut back the brush I look like I’m staring into their back yard with my binoculars. I bet I look like a creep.
• It is so funny that Merlin doesn’t pick that rooster up at all. Nothing, it’s like it doesn’t even hear it. A domesticated backyard rooster isn’t a bird at all to Merlin, it’s a…building, maybe.
• When I was starting out, I wished very much that Merlin would hear squirrels and frogs and bugs and just say “Not a bird.” It’s honestly unbelievable to me now that I could have ever thought a squirrel eating nuts was a bird. It is a singular, distinctive, massively unpleasant sound.
• One time I was following a sound on the trail trying to get Merlin to identify it, but it couldn’t because it was sneakers squeaking on a basketball court in someone’s backyard.
• One time I was following a sound at a park trying to get Merlin to identify it, but it couldn’t because it was a girl opening and closing a banana clip over and over again. I was inadvertently stalking a small girl for maybe…10 full minutes? I bet I looked like a creep.
• Merlin used to think the sound of my phone on vibrate was a Great Horned Owl, I think. At least it always popped a Great Horned Owl up every time it buzzed. I’d be interested to know if this has happened before. A woman at Dyke Marsh told me one time it thought her child was a killdeer.
• Minneapolis.

BOTD: the house sparrow, who is today so honored by being the only bird I see when I give up on the falcon. They're noisy and ubiquitous. They're fine.