Dumb-sounding birds of North America

September 8, 2015 • 1:00 pm

From National Public Radio’s Skunk Bear, with the help of birder Nick Lund, we have a new video of the dumbest-sounding birds of North America. If you’re a birder or bird aficionado, close or avert your eyes from the screen, listen, and see how many you can identify by sound alone. There are five, so make a list when you’re not watching. And report your answers below.

33 thoughts on “Dumb-sounding birds of North America”

  2. Only the first and the last one sound silly to me. The others range from normal (#2) to eerie (#3). The forth sounds more like a monkey or ape than a bird. 😉

  3. When I lived in Australia I often thought of making a cd called “Ridiculous Birdcalls of Australia” to sell to tourists….

    This one (which is especially appropriate for this site) was one of my favorites — the catbird.

  4. The Bittern made me think I need to check if I got a tap dripping or new to jiggle the handle on the toilet.

  5. I totally missed the Puffin. The Bald Eagle wouldn’t sound silly if it were a small bird, but I agree it’s funny from an eagle.

    The Bittern sound to me is wonderful and mysterious, a sound of marshes full of unseen life. I’d never call it dumb, though it is intriguingly odd.

    1. Yes, it’s great to hear it in the field, especially as bitterns are so well-camouflaged that you seldom see one. I remember standing on an elevated platform above a marsh on Vancouver Island and not only hearing one, but watching it as it called (they look as well as sound strange when they’re calling), and thinking that I was seeing something that not too many people get to see.

  6. I would have thought Palin would be on the list. Sarah, not Michael, who can be very very silly but not in the least bit dumb.

  8. Like sedgequeen, I thought the bald eagle only sounded funny because it came from a big bird.

    The others I wondered what I’d think if I heard them coming from the room next door and didn’t know they were birds, instead of in the outdoors! That boggles the imagination a bit

  11. I got the bald eagle and the barred owl. I’ve never heard any of the others. In their defense, we probably think the eagle sounds silly because every time you see one on TV, they use a red-tailed hawk instead. And that was a really weird barred owl; they usually don’t sound that dumb.

  13. With the unusual sounds from birds,mo often wonder what sounds dinosaurs made. The Hollywood roar they give them is way to mammalian to me and probably completely inaccurate (crocs don’t roar).

    1. Actually, crocodilians do roar. Males do it to signal their presence and size. If you look at the picture of the alligator in today’s WEIT Wildlife posting, he’s adopting a typical roaring stance, and you can see that the water is agitated over his back. That’s due to the frequency and intensity of the sounds he’s making – there’s a strong infrasound component.

  15. I just got the barred owl. I missed the bald eagle because I’ve seen a few but never heard one. The others I’ve neither seen nor heard.

    What should have been on this list is the double-crested cormorant. My little nephew called them “pig birds” because of the sounds they make. It’s the “adults at roost” sound on this page.

  16. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is given credit for the audio. They have an app called Merlin that allows you to ID birds on your smartphone which includes sounds for 400 North American birds. You can learn more and download it from

    merlin.allaboutbirds.org

  17. I couldn’t identify any of these bird sounds, but playing them woke up my cat, Miles, who had been snoozing just beside my laptop and is now looking around all wide-eyed for the source of those sounds!

  18. I like the account by Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, of how an acquaintance was converted to Christianity. Camping (sinning?) with his girlfriend, he heard what he thought was the voice of the devil outside the tent. Later when Dawkins recounted this tale, two experienced birdwatchers among his listeners laughed and exclaimed “Manx Shearwater”.

  19. Its hard to reconcile the wimpy sound that the Eagle makes with such a fearsome Raptor, I think the Barred Owl is my favourite plus the nod at the end to the only God I recognise Mozart.

  20. The only two I got were two I expected to be on that list, American Bittern and Barred Owl. I didn’t think that particular Bittern recording was terribly representative, though I had trouble finding a really good “oonk – a – choonk” on both xeno-canto & Macaulay as well! Happily I both heard and saw vocalizing A. Bitterns on a local marsh during the spring before last.

    Agree with those who say “dumb” is the wrong adjective. In the case of a caterwauling Barred, I’d go with “satanical,” though!

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