Strange Squawking Sound From Treetops at Night: Mystery Solved With Photos
It was one chilly day in the Fall when my neighbor told me that he'd seen something unusual in a tree: a blue parrot. We assumed that it was someone's escaped pet since we don't have parrots around here, and with the colder air on the way, we wondered how a parrot would survive here in the Ozark mountains. It was starting to get frosty at night.
I never saw the parrot, but the next evening I heard a loud squawking sound coming from the trees, and it repeated in sad, lonely bursts through the evening. As the winter grew nearer, each night the squawking continued, and finally I put signs up around the neighborhood asking would someone please come and get their poor blue parrot. I still hadn't seen the alleged bird, but I'd heard enough.
The sounds from the trees went on for weeks, but eventually stopped. We presumed that the blue parrot had fought the cold nights for as long as it could, and it was a sad quietness in the winter trees now. Eventually I forgot about the bird, and went on with life, occasionally seeing the voice memo on my phone titled 'blue parrot', but otherwise the bird was gone.
That all changed when I was lucky enough to be holding my camera one day in the trees near the house, and took several pictures of a barred owl sitting on a branch. I had heard lots of owls at night, and so I presumed that this was where all of that who-ing was coming from.
I went to utube to listen to the call of a barred owl, as internet proof of who was who-ing, and found the exact who sound: an adult barred owl. Then I clicked on a juvenile barred owl video, and the baby owl was making it's own odd sound. Hardly owl-like at all. More like a parrot. It was squawking. In other words, I had found the source of the squawking that I'd heard months before-- it was no blue parrot at all-- it was a juvenile barred owl.
In conclusion; if you ever hear a parrot in the trees at night, it might not be a blue parrot, and it may not be a parrot at all. It may be a baby barred owl.
Here's the squawk on a utube video, the sound at night around here every year since the blue parrot incident.
thanks for looking and reading along, if you like birds or rhyming words, upvote like crazy and let me know all about it below in comments
That is one bird I would love to attract to my property. Just to hear its calls at night and to control the mice.
Great video.
I like these barred owls too, they're just small enough that they don't try to catch my cats, but scare everything else away hopefully!
Owls are so cool! Thanks for posting the baby owl squawk :-)
I like how they stretch a wing out to mimic the tree limbs- it looked like this baby was practicing that in the video.
I love owls, they have always fascinated me with that eerie ability to turn their heads all the way around. And their hooting has a haunting quality to it.
That's hilarious that you thought it was a parrot. Not that I would have known better, but I have to say that screech is awful, haha.
It's a loud screech too, when thought it was a parrot it was sad, but now I don't even notice the babies anymore- apparently my garden is a breeding ground for barred owls, since now I hear them every year.
Well, that's very cool, and actually I just remembered you have the HIGHLY IRRITATING whipporwill in your area, and I would take the screech of the owl over that any day. Oh my God, when there was one close to our camp at night it made it hard to sleep! haha!
Whippoorwills are big birds, and loud as hell, I know. There's also the Chuck-will's-widow, similar bird and maybe even more common-- just as big and loud!