I'm A Night Owl, Baby
I enjoy sleeping with the windows open and lately I’ve been hearing an owl calling at about 3am. It has a unique call. I figured I’d miss hearing it when I went camping last weekend, but both nights at 3am I heard the call again. It is a sound I can’t get out of my head, so I spent some time today looking up the owls that live here in Oregon and listening to their calls.
I found it and oddly it is a Northern Spotted Owl. I say oddly because most of the old forests have been clear cut where I live, and even some acres of my property were thinned a few years ago and all the rest of the big trees blew down in the storm two years ago.
Spotted owls supposedly only live in old growth forest, but I guess since old growth is a rarity these days; the owls are possibly adapting to a new environment.
Here is the sound I’ve been hearing.
Spotted Owl
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
11 Comments:
Funny call. Sounds like he's saying "Hip hip hooray", in a doleful owl sounding voice. Like if Eeyore was celebrating something. All I ever get to hear here is sirens, speakers thumping and those damn crickets.
That's the same "who-cooks-for-you" sound made by the barred owl around here.
I love night sounds....except for the dogs :( that bark and bark like they're breathing out of their assholes.
At the cottage, I hear owls at night across the lake. They live in a protected forest which we own and share responsibility for with a governmental conservation organization.
Such an eerie but beautiful sound.
Lucky you!
sppooookkkeeee...
when i sleep with the windows open, my allergies flare up.
I'm the same as Dalia.....I love to sleep with the windows open, especially when it's cooler (don't get me started...) but gahh....I have to wake up around 3 and take a Benadryl.
i'm jealous. The only noises I hear with my windows open are the damn crossing guards with their $%^&#! whistles...and screaming kids at the school across the street.
We have a few owls around here that sound much like your spotted one. There's actually a lot of wildlife here considering I live inside the Beltway in Northern Virginia. Owls, hawks, foxes, coons, possums, deer.
We have one skinny little fox that doesn't seem to have a brain in his head. I like to sneak up on him and wait for him to discover my presence when I'm a few feet away. The reaction is priceless. OMG, where did you come from?
The other night I was standing in the front yard when an owl swooped down out of a maple right in front of me. It was after something in the grass and didn't seem to mind my presence at all. It flew off for a minute and then returned to its perch in the maple.
The night before that an owl was hooting away down the street. Part of its sound resembled someone doing a poor imitation of a chimpanzee. Hoot, hoot, eee, eee, eee, hoot, hoot.
at 3am in the morning, i hear the wild call of my cracked out neighbors, fighting over who ate the last 4 day old hot wing from dominos.
righteous.
Darev, I miss crickets. We don't have them where I live, but I do hear them in the dunes at the beach.
Donna, I'll have to check out their call because they are starting to over-run spotted owl territory around here.
Tango, best comparison yet!
Beth, sadly no Whip-or-will calls for you to hear.
Anon, at times I can be very fortunate.
Dalia and Amy, You two need to go to Costco and get a bottle of Alertec. It is a generic Zyrtec. Benideyl is bad stuff. This stuff works with no side effects of sleepiness or dry mouth. And Amy, was that school there when you moved into that house?
Rich, with so m any houses back there the animals seem to be adapting pretty well. We are getting cougar sightings in Astoria. And I mean in Astoria.
Irish, that's kind of like wild animal noises. Thinking of moving?
Yeah, the school was there, but it was summer, so we just didn't know.....*cries* We just...didn't....know...
Post a Comment
<< Home