On this last day of the year we officially failed in our Little Year quest (more after the jump), but we did see a lifer, so that gave us some hope. The bird was a MERLIN, and it was the fourth (!) Little Year bird in a row to be a double lifer. There was a sighting a couple of days ago at Chicago’s Irving Park Cemetery, and we saw the bird right where it was supposed to be: perched in a bare tree near the entrance. It flew away after about five minutes, but we had a decent look at it on this warm, rainy day. We drove around the cemetery trying for another glance, but no luck. However, we did see an large neoclassical building with an odd inscription on its pediment: COLUMBARIUM. It turns out (thank you, Wikipedia) a columbarium is place for the public storage of ash-filled urns. These buildings are said to look a little like dovecots, and columba being Latin for dove, columbarium is Latin for dovecot, and so there you go. The odd thing is that the scientific name for the Merlin is Falco columbarius, and I guess the bird is sort of dovelike. But it’s an odd coincidence all the same. So anyway, I think a dovecot for urns (an urncot? an ashcot?) would be a great place for any birder’s ashes.
