I know it was a raptor, but I'm not sure what kind.

I was just driving home, and, a block from my house, I see a bird land in a tree right next to me. It doesn't immediately click as one of the birds I can identify automatically, so I pull over to look at it. Coloration, I'm thinking maybe mourning dove, but it's not quite right. Then I'm thinking maybe mockingbird, but not quite that, either. That's why I pulled over.

Then it turns its head, and it's got a raptor beak. I look at the feet again, and what I'd taken for songbird feet are bigger and stronger than I'd originally thought -- I can't quite see the exact shape, but, yeah, raptor.

The thing is, it looks like it's less than a foot long. And the smallest raptor I know is the peregrine falcon, which is, like, sixteen inches long. Could I be misinterpreting the size? Maybe, but it's on a low branch of a tree, right across the street from me. It really DOES look like ten inches. Maybe a juvenile? It flies away, and I pull out the Sibley Book of North American Birds that we keep in the glove compartment, and start looking through it.

Juvenile peregrines have different plumage, so that's probably not it. It's definitely not a kestrel. Doesn't look much like a sparrowhawk, either.

You know what it looks like? A merlin. But merlins just aren't around here, much.

Still, we ARE on the migration path.

So I'm going with "merlin". I'm figuring that I actually saw a merlin, which is just really cool.

Around here, we've got lots of redtail hawks, and a few peregrines, although mostly closer to downtown. (And isn't THAT awesome? There exists a species of hawk that lives IN CITIES. They evolved to dive-bomb off of cliff-sides to take down other birds, such as rock doves, but skyscrapers are even BETTER than cliffs for their purposes, and another name for the rock dove is "the common urban pigeon." Common pigeons are actually technically feral, rather than wild -- they're generally descended from domesticated pigeons, which used to be commonly raised in rooftop coops in cities. A few people still do that. But, because they're feral rather than wild, they're more comfortable around humans -- and they're somewhat less skilled at avoiding predation from hawks. We humans have created an absolute paradise for the peregrine falcon -- we gave it something to hunt off of even better than its native cliffs, then created a subspecies of its favorite food that was easier to hunt and RIDICULOUSLY common.)

But we don't have merlins.

And I may just have seen one.