Night Sounds

It is spring in Tennessee and that means that nature is waking up. But waking up doesn’t necessarily mean sleeping at night. Many nocturnal animals are beginning to announce their presence with their voice. Mostly males are singing their hearts out to beg for a pretty girl to look their way.

For many animals, sound is how they locate each other, especially nocturnal animals. Humans, being diurnal, rely more on sight and therefore most of us aren’t as good as animals at hearing and identifying sounds. Night sounds, especially, can be strange, and even scary to humans. Here is a primer on a few night sounds and information on how to identify even more.

Owls are easy…they sound like…well, an owl…don’t they? Great-horned owls have a nice low hoo-hoo-hoo like you expect an owl to sound. But screech owls have a couple of calls and neither is what you would expect. Their common “whinny” sounds pretty much like a horse whinny. The barred owl’s “who cooks for you” call is loud and will have you sitting straight up in a tent in the middle of the night.

Everyone has heard coyotes on western movies. We have them right around here and if you have your windows open at night you might hear them. I hear them regularly around my house at night. Red and gray foxes sometimes bark like a yappy little dog, just not as long or constant as a yappy little dog.

But the biggest sound at night this time of year is the call of the frogs and toads. Especially if you live near a wet area you are probably already hearing the tiny little spring peepers and tree frogs. We also have lots of toads around here and they make some pretty unique sounds in the dark of the night. I think some of them sound like running your fingers across the teeth of a comb.

Crickets and Katydids will soon be calling at night. There is an old southern theory that you can tell the temperature by counting the chirps of a cricket. I have looked up the formula and it gets you in the neighborhood of the right temperature…but really, you can guess just as close.

Most birds go to bed at night, but soon you will be hearing whip-poor-wills singing from dust to dawn. A few years ago my wife and I decided it would be fun to sleep out on the deck and listen to the night sounds. A whip-poor-will on a nearby tree did it’s best to keep us awake all night long. I don’t think the crazy bird even stopped to take a breath. Mockingbirds will also sing in the middle of the night, but mockingbirds aren’t stuck on one tune like whip-poor-wills. Mockingbirds can sing just about any and every song. This is a true story…At the tennis center where we used to live a mockingbird lived nearby. There was a deck by court 1 where we used to sit after playing to sip a coke and discuss the match. The local mockingbird learned to mimic the sound of a cell phone so well that when he did his cell phone ringing impersonation 4 people on the deck would reach for their phones.

To learn to identify night sounds you can just search on Google for “owl sounds” or “insect sounds” or whatever, and listen to sounds on your computer. For example, just Google “frogs of Tennessee” and one of the first sites to pop up is the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) web site with the actual sounds. Also, there are a number of excellent books available on Amazon with included CDs. It is fun to know what you are hearing….especially when it is dark, and scary, and there are things out there…