Tawny Owl 'wailing' sound clip

[Hedgehoggy]

A couple of nights ago (approx 1.30am) I heard a male Tawny owl quietly hoo-hooing in ‘his’ tree outside my bedroom window in my back garden, then quite unexpectedly he started making a ‘wailing’ sound. It startled me enough to jump out of bed and rush downstairs to fetch my camera and record the sounds. I frequently hear the Tawnys in my garden (adults + juvs, plus had 2 fighting in my garden a few years ago!), but I've never heard this 'wailing' sound before. Has anyone else ever heard this ‘wail’ from a Tawny? Without wishing to anthropomorphise, the ‘wail’ sounded very morose indeed!

‪003.MOV‬‏ - YouTube

I sent the sound clip to God's Own Clay Home Page (whose fab website has often been cited on WAB) for analysis and they replied that they didn’t think they’d heard exactly this version before, although admittedly my sound clip wasn’t of the greatest quality with the background traffic from the distant dual carriageway

[Deb London]

Very interesting HH. We don't get them here, so I can't comment on whether I've ever heard this (don't recall it). It sounds like you have recorded something new.

[Littlesparrow]

Sometimes the difficulty is working out what is making a noise, we have juvenile
Buzzards in the field opposite and they make very strange noises, and foxes can make you jump out of your skin at night with their cries. Well done for recording the Tawny and identifying it.

[Hedgehoggy]

Certainly new to me, Deb , that’s why I was interested to know if anyone else had heard this sound. Shame you don't get Tawnies where you are, they're one of my favourite birds.

As you rightly say, LS, sometimes it’s difficult to identify what creature is actually making the unfamiliar sounds we all hear from time to time, so I guess many unfamiliar sounds must go undocumented, or wrongly identified.

So much out there still to learn and be discovered!

[SheffieldLass]

Yes. They can vary their call quite a bit. We used to have 'territorials' over our gardens. All sorts of funny calls then. They'd often sit on the chimney and you'd hear the hooting channeled down the chimney. And could look out of the velux and see it up close.

[Hedgehoggy]

That's interesting SL, thanks for your input . Do you think this could be a territorial call, even at this time of year? I didn't hear any other owl calls at the time, not even when he was quietely hoo-hooing.

[mbaldw]

Fascinating sound-clip Hedgehoggy, nothing I've ever heard before from a Tawny owl (in fact, had I been hearing it 'on spec', I'd have gone with something like a fox). I had a flick through some of my books last night and none refer to a 'wail'; the closest I get is in Heimo Mikkola's Owls of Europe:

"The oo-trill of the male, given immediately after delivering prey is also a territorial conflict call (Wendland, 1963). According to Southern (1970), the noises made by two males disputing are highly diagnostic, and very valuable as an aid to discovering territorial boundaries. This call has been described as a loud discordant 'caterwauling', which is quite spine-chilling if heard unexpectedly at close quarters."

Victor Wendland's paper is in German and, alas, my understanding of the language is insufficient to translate so I'm restricted the English summary. Anyway, it looks like that call might be territory/aggression related, especially if your garden is on a territory boundary.

Cheers,
Marc.

[Gill Catton]

Almost every year I seem to discover a new tawny owl call, They're tricksy I tell you! Certainly have a significantly greater vocab than twit-twoooo

[Hedgehoggy]

Thanks muchly for that info and the link, Marc; I've saved it for future ref too

They certainly are tricksy, Gill, and it would make life a lot easier for us if they just stuck to their twit-twooos!