Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I've been trying for several nights to capture the owl(s) calling from the woods surrounding my house, and finally succeeded. (S)he wasn't as close to the window as the previous night - maybe 100 feet away - but close enough to get a several minutes of decent (not great) audio. These were recorded about 3:30 am, 2018 July 13, Fitzwilliam NH, with a Tascam DR-40 digital recorder through its internal mics.

I've boosted the signal by about 20 db, and I've also clipped out the pauses in between calls to speed things up a bit, since they were coming at at invtervals of 35-40 seconds. And speaking of speed changes: there's a series of high-pitched chirps in the amplified signal that I didn't hear while recording. I wasn't sure if this was an artifact I'd introduced or not, so I slowed down the playback to about 1/3 speed. This was definitely a critter of some kind, but I couldn't tell you what. A mouse? A bat? Some kind of nocturnal bird? The slowed-down version almost sounds like the keening of a hawk. Almost. Also in the slowed-down clip you can hear some kind of rhythmic tapping or thumping, very faint. Again, source unknown - and without slowing down the audio I might never have heard it!

Here's a roadmap of the 2-minute clip:

0:03 - 0.19: three hoots
0:32 - 0:38: variation #1
0:43 - 0:49: (twigs snap - deer walking around?)
0:51 - 0.56 - variation #2
0:57: (another twig snaps)
1:06: final hoot
1:13 - 1:17 (pause - silence)
1:17 - 2:05: 1st two hoots, 1/3 speed, with unknown chirping & tapping audible

Amazing capture. Spooky. Sounded almost like a dog starting to bark when the call first started. You didn't hear the chirps? Interesting. Quite distinct on playback. Who knows what's creeping about in the night...

I wasn't monitoring the recording as it was being captured, & the original signal was about 20 db fainter than what I've uploaded here. I didn't hear those peeps until I'd amplified the signal - and even then I wasn't sure if they were from an external source, or the result of something I'd done to boost the level. Slowing down playback to about 30% convinced me it's an animal of some kind - but since the chirps all seem to come from the same direction, I no longer think it might be a bat. A small rodent, maybe, or a nocturnal insect?

I tried again a few nights later, but only got one distant hoot, and none of the squeaks.

Thanks for listening!