Wild animals

What's That Weird Noise in the Night?

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

You lot're laying in bed, sound asleep, or counting leaping sheep as you drift off into dreams. And then, a scream. Or perhaps a screech. Or a guttural moan. Or a wail from beyond the window.

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

Many creatures make mysterious noises in the night, simply in darkness information technology can be hard to tell just which species made that strange audio that you hear.

Here are seven potential suspects to narrow your search; critters that are could be in your lawn, or your favorite army camp, adding their sounds to the night'south chorus.See if you lot recognize their calls, and write in to tell us what other weird noises you've heard in nature.

  • Red Fox

    Every bit I remember, the tardily-night phone call with my new-to-Maryland neighbor went something like this: "Do you hear a woman screaming?" she sounded incoherent and a lilliputian frantic. "A woman's being stabbed in our forest! I'g calling the police!"

    "No," I said. "That'due south a red fox. You're hearing the vixen'due south scream."

    Silence. The aching scream came again. Clearly audible through the telephone and from the forest between our yards. "That's a fob? That'south not a trick! Are you sure that'southward a flim-flam?"

    I was sure. 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 bodacious her, locking herself in a room, and calling the police was a completely understandable and sensible reaction to 1's kickoff meet with carmine fox screams shattering the dark.

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

    Read more nearly cherry-red foxes and their wily means. They're now 1 of the most wildly distributed carnivores on World. (CCB)

  • Barn Owl

    Many owls hoot in the dark, but not the barn owl. Oh no.

    Befouled owls utter a rasping, harsh scream that sounds like it'south straight out of a low-budget horror moving-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 young are begging for food from their parents.

    Befouled owls are found across nearly all of the lower-48 states. They adopt open up, grassy country, where they hunt for rodents at night and roost in trees or old buildings, like barns, during the 24-hour interval. They're usually sighted flight low across roads at night.

    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 similar the flop-dropping sound from your child's morning cartoons. (JEH)

  • Raccoon

    Most people don't recall of raccoons as specially vocal animals. They don't telephone call out across the nighttime like many animals on this list. But they actually make an array of sounds, particularly when agitated or alarmed. Sometimes, yous're the one who inadvertently alarms them, resulting in a shriek that has been likened to a high-pitched pig squeal.

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

    But that twittering shriek is aught compared to the sound of a full-on raccoon fight. Territorial males occasionally appoint in battles that include heavy breathing, grunting and the kinds of screams you hear in horror-movie torture scenes.

    I recall one summertime evening when sounds of a depression, rolling growl sounded outside my bedroom window. Shortly thereafter, the lights in every business firm in the neighborhood were turned on as a very big raccoon snarled, growled and screamed as it savagely mauled a much smaller raccoon, leaving it lying paralyzed in a neighbor's m.

    Some creature sounds give you the creeps. Fighting raccoons ruin your evening. (MM)

  • Limpkin

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

    These uncommon wetland birds are found in Florida and parts of Primal and South America. They look like a cross between a crane and an ibis, with white-speckled brown plumage and a long, curving yellowish bill 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 information technology wakes you upward in the dead of nighttime. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, male limpkins have long, looping windpipes that allow them to produce these sounds, which are used to help the bird mark their territory.

    The female person sometimes responds with a softer groaning phone call, and so together they make a rather disturbing duet. Individuals of both sex activity will also make a staccato rattleing dissonance. (JEH)

  • Feral Pigs

    Or feral hogs, as we phone call them in the parts of Florida and Georgia where I grew upwards. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agronomics put the number of wild hogs in the U.S. at around vi million animals across 35 states. And growing. But Texas has more feral hogs than Florida, simply Florida's population is believed to be, well, the oldest. The first pigs known to get in in America came with Hernando de Soto in the sixteen th century. They've been hither always since.

    They're a huge problem and the UsD.A. calculates the damage they cause amounts to about $2.five billion every year. Fifty-fifty one or two pigs squealing in the night is startling. But when they gather in groups, called sounders, the cacophony of squeals, grunts and growls can audio like a banshee apocalypse. If you don't know what you're hearing, it tin can be extremely unnerving.

    On his beginning camping trip to a country park in Florida, my and so 3-twelvemonth-old son was sleeping peacefully until the feral hogs started to gather. This is the kid who was famous for sleeping through annihilation. But it didn't have long earlier he sat commodities upright in his sleeping bag, clutched his blimp deport, and whispered, "What's out at that place?

    Pigs, I told him. Really noisy pigs. He nodded and spent the rest of the nighttime in my sleeping handbag. The next day I took him to find the wallows where the pigs had been, and the ground was torn and churned like at that place had been some kind of battle.

    Equally the wild pig population has exploded globally, non just in the U.S., they're wrecking a lot more than than a pre-schooler's first camping trip. And are even contributing to climate change. (CCB)

  • Indian Peafowl (aka Peacock)

    I never expected to add a peacock to my birding Grand Listing. But that's exactly what happened iii years ago, when I moved into a semi-rural neighborhood a few hours north of Brisbane. Unpacking box after box, I looked out the window to run into a resplendent male peacock strutting down the road, its tail flouncing along the pavement. Every few steps, he'd let out an unmistakable honk.

    But that wasn't the only racket that our Honkeytonk (as we nicknamed him) made. Months later, when the breeding season rolled around, we awoke in the night to a high-pitched, repeating scream. Honkeytonk, it seemed, was in search of a mate. And he kept up 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 lot might call up. In improver to their native range in Bharat, feral populations occur throughout North America, Due south Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, Commonwealth of australia, and New Zealand. Despite their lovely advent, feral peacocks are often quite a nuisance to people, who ofttimes object to both their noise and their very large debris.

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

  • Coyotes

    I beloved to pace outside on a leap evening and the howl of coyotes. Judging from the posts I see on neighborhood apps, many are much less enamored. They get freaked out by what they consider hordes of coyotes descending upon their backyards.

    Coyotes are at present widespread in Due north America and have made themselves at habitation in the suburbs. That ways a lot of people hear the howls, yips and barks, particularly during the mating season between January and March. At this fourth dimension of yr, pairs establish territories, and they howl to announce that. other nearby pairs may then respond, announcing their ain territories. At such times, it tin can sound like a pour of howls across the landscape.

    It sounds, to human ears, similar there are many more coyotes than at that place actually are, leading distressed social media users to proclaim neighborhoods are "overrun" with coyotes. Read more about coyote howling .  (MM)