Wild fauna

What'south That Weird Noise in the Dark?

What made that audio in the night? © mountainamoeba / Flickr

You're laying in bed, sound asleep, or counting leaping sheep as y'all drift off into dreams. And then, a scream. Or peradventure a screech. Or a guttural moan. Or a wail from across the window.

Was it an owl? Or a raccoon? Or perhaps some other unknown animal?

Many creatures make mysterious noises in the nighttime, just in darkness it can be hard to tell just which species made that strange sound that you lot hear.

Here are vii potential suspects to narrow your search; critters that are could be in your backyard, or your favorite campsite, adding their sounds to the night'south chorus.See if you recognize their calls, and write in to tell u.s. what other weird noises you've heard in nature.

  • Red Fox

    As I remember, the late-night call with my new-to-Maryland neighbor went something similar this: "Do you hear a woman screaming?" she sounded incoherent and a little frantic. "A adult female's being stabbed in our woods! I'1000 calling the police force!"

    "No," I said. "That's a red fox. Y'all're hearing the vixen'south scream."

    Silence. The agonized scream came again. Clearly audible through the phone and from the forest between our yards. "That'south a fox? That's not a fox! Are yous sure that'southward a play tricks?"

    I was certain. I ended up sending her a link to a YouTube video of the scream to convince her to come out of the room where she'd locked herself in with her kindergartner. Which, I assured her, locking herself in a room, and calling the police was a completely understandable and sensible reaction to one's beginning meet with red flim-flam screams shattering the nighttime.

    In fact, it's and then sensible that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources regularly posts stories on Facebook assuring people that the screams, cries and shrieks they hear are red foxes, not people beingness assaulted in their backyards.

    Read more well-nigh scarlet foxes and their wily ways. They're at present i of the well-nigh wildly distributed carnivores on Earth. (CCB)

  • Befouled Owl

    Many owls hoot in the night, merely not the befouled owl. Oh no.

    Barn owls utter a rasping, harsh scream that sounds similar it's direct out of a low-budget horror motion-picture show. The sound is typically made by the male, calling while in flight. Birds of both sexes utter a variety of other creepy hissing sounds when disturbed on their nests, or when immature are begging for food from their parents.

    Barn owls are plant across nearly all of the lower-48 states. They prefer open, grassy country, where they hunt for rodents at nighttime and roost in copse or old buildings, similar barns, during the day. They're usually sighted flying low beyond roads at dark.

    Many other owls in the Tyto genus make similarly unsettling noises. Australia's greater and lesser sooty owls make a noise called the "bomb whistle," because it sounds like the bomb-dropping sound from your child'south morning cartoons. (JEH)

  • Raccoon

    Nigh people don't call back of raccoons equally particularly vocal animals. They don't call out across the night like many animals on this listing. Simply they actually make an assortment of sounds, particularly when agitated or alarmed. Sometimes, yous're the i who inadvertently alarms them, resulting in a shriek that has been likened to a high-pitched hog squeal.

    This is not a pleasant sound, and more than one time I've been scared out of my skin when I've surprised a raccoon during an evening walk or line-fishing trip.

    Merely that twittering shriek is aught compared to the sound of a full-on raccoon fight. Territorial males occasionally engage in battles that include heavy animate, grunting and the kinds of screams y'all hear in horror-movie torture scenes.

    I recall one summer evening when sounds of a low, rolling growl sounded exterior my bedroom window. Shortly thereafter, the lights in every house in the neighborhood were turned on as a very large raccoon snarled, growled and screamed as it savagely mauled a much smaller raccoon, leaving it lying paralyzed in a neighbor'due south chiliad.

    Some animal sounds give yous the creeps. Fighting raccoons ruin your evening. (MM)

  • Limpkin

    If you hear a startling scream in the swamp at night, chances are information technology's a limpkin. At least, we promise information technology'southward a limpkin .

    These uncommon wetland birds are plant in Florida and parts of Central and South America. They look like a cross between a crane and an ibis, with white-speckled brown plumage and a long, curving yellow neb which they use to prise apple snails from their shells.

    Male limpkins are well known for producing a repetitive, high-pitched wail or scream that sounds remarkably human-like when it wakes you up in the dead of night. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, male limpkins take long, looping windpipes that let them to produce these sounds, which are used to assist the bird mark their territory.

    The female sometimes responds with a softer groaning call, then together they brand a rather disturbing duet. Individuals of both sex will as well make a staccato rattleing noise. (JEH)

  • Feral Pigs

    Or feral hogs, as nosotros call them in the parts of Florida and Georgia where I grew up. Estimates from the U.South. Department of Agriculture put the number of wild hogs in the U.S. at around half-dozen million animals across 35 states. And growing. But Texas has more than feral hogs than Florida, but Florida's population is believed to be, well, the oldest. The showtime pigs known to arrive in America came with Hernando de Soto in the 16 th century. They've been here ever since.

    They're a huge problem and the U.S.D.A. calculates the impairment they crusade amounts to near $ii.five billion every twelvemonth. Even i or two pigs squealing in the night is startling. But when they get together in groups, called sounders, the cacophony of squeals, grunts and growls can audio like a banshee apocalypse. If you lot don't know what you're hearing, it can exist extremely unnerving.

    On his showtime camping trip to a state park in Florida, my then iii-year-erstwhile son was sleeping peacefully until the feral hogs started to get together. This is the kid who was famous for sleeping through annihilation. Merely information technology didn't accept long earlier he saturday bolt upright in his sleeping pocketbook, clutched his blimp behave, and whispered, "What'southward out there?

    Pigs, I told him. Really noisy pigs. He nodded and spent the residue of the night in my sleeping handbag. The next day I took him to discover the wallows where the pigs had been, and the ground was torn and churned like there had been some kind of boxing.

    As the wild hog population has exploded globally, not just in the U.S., they're wrecking a lot more a pre-schooler'due south first camping trip. And are even contributing to climate change. (CCB)

  • Indian Peafowl (aka Peacock)

    I never expected to add together a peacock to my birding M List. But that's exactly what happened three years agone, when I moved into a semi-rural neighborhood a few hours north of Brisbane. Unpacking box after box, I looked out the window to see a resplendent male person peacock strutting downward the road, its tail flouncing forth the pavement. Every few steps, he'd let out an unmistakable honk.

    Merely that wasn't the only dissonance that our Honkeytonk (as we nicknamed him) made. Months later, when the breeding season rolled effectually, we awoke in the dark to a high-pitched, repeating scream. Honkeytonk, information technology seemed, was in search of a mate. And he kept upward his screaming for several months until our neighbors had him relocated to a farm, where he could live with the company several peacock friends.

    Feral peacocks are more mutual than you might remember. In addition to their native range in India, feral populations occur throughout North America, S Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, Commonwealth of australia, and New Zealand. Despite their lovely advent, feral peacocks are often quite a nuisance to people, who oft object to both their racket and their very large droppings.

    The city of Los Angeles made headlines last year for their attempts to curb the local peacock population, with one resident notably describing the birds' call as " sound[ing] similar babies being tortured through a microphone, a very large microphone." (JEH)

  • Coyotes

    I love to step outside on a jump evening and the howl of coyotes. Judging from the posts I meet on neighborhood apps, many are much less enamored. They go freaked out past what they consider hordes of coyotes descending upon their backyards.

    Coyotes are now widespread in North America and have fabricated themselves at home in the suburbs. That means a lot of people hear the howls, yips and barks, especially during the mating season between January and March. At this fourth dimension of yr, pairs plant territories, and they howl to announce that. other nearby pairs may then answer, announcing their own territories. At such times, information technology can audio like a pour of howls across the mural.

    It sounds, to human ears, like in that location are many more than coyotes than there actually are, leading distressed social media users to proclaim neighborhoods are "overrun" with coyotes. Read more than virtually coyote howling .  (MM)