It definitely has trouble with similar species sometimes — I've noticed it recently with crows and warblers. But it does a great job generally and direct observation of the bird usually clears up the confusion.

I have a bunch of Blue Jays around my house and it turns out they are so good at imitating a specific hawk species(blanking on its name) that Merlin actually reports it as the hawk! I went and listened to real recordings of that hawks call and I couldn't tell it apart from the Jays imitation call.

Now, I know it's technically possible it was a real id, but Im pretty sure the bald eagle it detected was actually one of the kids down the street running around screaming lol

Surely your local blujays must have heard the hawk somewhere in order to learn its call? It figures that a hawk would occasionally show up in your neighborhood.

Machine identification can still need some manual confirmation, even though this app does a really good job. It’s not a confirmed sighting until you have a visual confirmation.

There definitely are hawks all around my area.

In this case, while I couldn't see it directly while he was making the call, I had watched him fly to and land in a nearby tree before the call and then shortly after watched it take off. So I can't be 100% sure, but I'd be willing to bet that it was the Jay.

The only errors I've seen it make with common birds in the UK are also with finches - specifically with the greenfinch's "at rest" twitter, which it consistently mistakes for a goldfinch.

The two are visually distinctive but, in Merlin's defence, I can't tell them apart by ear either!