Here's a bunch of unrelated of photos of birds in our area I've photographed that are NOT the culprit. I'm also never gonna beat the "became a birder by accident" allegations
For the last few months, every time I’ve gone on a walk I’ve heard a sound - an animal call that to me sounds like some kind of large bird - and what started as idly wondering what it was, moved on to stopping whenever I heard it to try to discern, has now descended into long fevered youtube scrubbing of various animal sounds trying to ID the motherfucker.
I’ve tried various bird sound ID apps, I’ve tried sound-matching to existing animal call recordings - nothing has taken.
Can anyone help me figure out what the hell this thing is?
MYSTERIOUS CREATURE (Crank the volume, it's way in the distance)
For location purposes: I’m in southern Connecticut and the first time I heard the sound was February of 2025. It usually makes the sound in calls of 2-5 at a time, in this fifteen second recording it calls twice, two times each. (It also always happens from a particular direction which makes me wonder if it's someone's exotic pet a street over; I thought maybe a cockatoo but it's not quite right)
In our neighborhood we have: great horned owls, screech owls, red tailed hawks, Cooper’s hawks, peregrine falcons and turkey vultures regularly flying overheard - we have cardinals, robins, blue jays, chimney swifts, mockingbirds, carolina warblers and sparrows, even woodpeckers nesting everywhere - but none of the above match this sound. I've ever tried outside of birds in the odd event it's something else.
As mentioned back in April, in early 2020 one of our safetraps (a sentence that sure says a lot about my life) caught a small grey feral kitten; we found out shortly thereafter that she was pregnant.
Now - we've taken in so many cats over the years, but we'd never had one actively pregnant, so not only was this new to us it also means we have an accurate birth date for exactly one of the cats in our rescue.
mama givin berthhatchling
Gargoyle decided she felt safe with both of us - so safe she tried to give birth ON us; we were sitting with her on the bathroom floor and well, I'll spare you the details but it probably wasn't conducive to the birthing process so eventually she settled on the floor herself and finished the job. We're not sure if it was her being malnourished or what, but there was just one kitten in there. No stillborn, no birth defects - just this little guy.
proud gargoyle and her 'chip' i'm new and what is this
The creature Gargoyle birthed was named simultaneously 'Smokescreen' by our kids, and 'Chip' by his godmother (who, in a very 'what the fuck is my life' moment, is the former mayor of a major US city that we met entirely through early twitter and has since become an extended part of our family; if anything happens to Della or I, she gets the cats.) Smokescreen Chip it is.
GROWIN UPmy god those ears
and man, this little fucker grew SO fast.
t e e f tiredest child
As it turned out, what Gargoyle had created was not a son - but almost a perfect genetic clone of herself. Cellular division or some shit, I swear to god. Look at these beasts.
It was REALLY hard until about last year to tell them apart. Only recently has he stopped immediately resembling his mother because of his size; he dwarfs nearly every cat in our rescue by a LONG shot.
r e c l i n e no work today thank you
he always chooses the black decktexture needs
He's a massive fan of being on multiple surfaces at once. If his body can be both on the floor and on a rug, or in two rooms at once across a door frame? god he's so happy.
Weirdly, he's overly affectionate in rooms that have sinks and violent or edgy outside of them.
We attribute this to him being born in the bathroom, otherwise it kind of makes no sense? Purrs and nuzzles he'll give in spades in the bathroom, but if you cross that threshold you'll get a smack and a growl for the exact same interactions.
He also has this innate hatred of doors and things that block his path. I attribute this to when he was almost born twice (once on each of our laps but then....well..sucked back in before the final push...I'm sorry lmao), AND how he needed to be isolated from some of the other at-risk cats before he'd gotten his shots / fixed etc in his youth.
As a kitten he made it his mission to SCREAM HIS ASS OFF at our bedroom door while "trapped" in there with us and keep everyone awake. The alternative was for me to take him into another room, kick the at-risk cats out and let him sleep on my lap. Weirdly, this is both how I learned Blender and 100%'d Bravely Default II; I couldn't sleep because of him but he'd sleep on my lap if I was in the other room and upright, so I stayed up all night doing blender tutorials and level grinding.
Another fun thing about him is preference for running water; we'd tried those fountain style water dishes previously but cats always chewed the wires so we had to give up. Now he climbs up to the sinks and screams till someone turns it on for him.
his special watersthirstiest boi
Anyway, he's massive, he's fluffy, he's wonderful (except when he's mean but that's his right) and I'm so grateful I got to watch him get hatched.
Bringing you up-to-date coverage on the adorableness of wild creatures
It feels weird to me (a person living with an infinite number of cats) that I ever feel the need to go photograph anything other than the cats, but as the cats are indoors and I need to go outside every once a while, this happens.
(It also doesn't hurt that it's spring and there are HUNDREDS of rabbits outside at any given time. Please enjoy.)
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Here's a bunch of unrelated of photos of birds in our area I've photographed that are NOT the culprit. I'm also never gonna beat the "became a birder by accident" allegations
