05/31/2026
Eight sounds after dark and the animal behind each one.
The barred owl's "who cooks for you" call is eight syllables — and when it escalates to screaming, that's the pair calling together. They're fine.
The screech owl doesn't screech. The sound is a descending whinny — like a tiny horse — coming from inside a tree cavity.
🌿 The high-pitched wall of noise near standing water is spring peepers. The sustained thirty-second trill from the ditch is a toad. Both are frogs. Both sound nothing like what most people expect from a frog.
The whip-poor-will repeats its own name from ground level — sometimes hundreds of times without stopping. The katydid does the same from the treetops later in summer.
The short hoarse bark repeated at intervals that sounds like a woman screaming is the red fox. The chittering that sounds like small birds is raccoon kits.
Eight species. Most of them are within a hundred feet of the back door on any warm night this month 🐾
