Tweet

Or at least something close to an aural tweet.

Something in our back garden was making short calls or squawks, just as it was starting to get light this morning. Maybe groups of two or three calls, a second or so each in duration with another second or so interval. Quite a deep note, which I associate with a relatively large bird. On the other hand, not the hooting that I usually associate with an owl.

Off to Bing, which does talk of owls. But there is also talk of robins doing quite a bit of nocturnal singing and of magpies doing dawn singing. And magpies do squawk, although not, to my knowledge, in quite today's way. No talk of bats, but do they squawk as loud as this?

PS: concerned that aural might be to do with gold rather than with ears I looked it up in OED, which tells me that aural might be to do with the auras of psychics or with ears, seemingly a convergence of two rather different Latin or Greek words. Aurum is indeed gold, but aural is not admitted as a derived adjective. So no need for concern.

Reference 1: http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/long-eared_owl.html. Includes sound bites of bird song, including at least three sorts of owl, all rather different. And possibly representative...

Reference 2: https://www.jama.fr/. The source of at least some of the sound bites. A site for nature photographers (and their plastic).