I made !birding!birding@lemmy.ml if you’re interested :-)
And you’re right about Merlin! I never fully trust it either, but in this case I just used it to confirm that the call I heard was, indeed, a firecrest. I don’t hear them too often so I wasn’t sure. I ended up seeing it as well.
But I’ve had Merlin misidentify things before. It heard part of a Song Thrushes singing and thought it was an oystercatcher 😬