Urban Bigfoot Seriously?(2)

March 12, 2015

Ya I am about to start up again, last year I tried it religiously this time of year and got nothing, so I think the movements of these creatures brings them to my area around mid summer, but the small sample of years I have recorded is not enough to say anything definitively. The sighting data on the BFRO seems to suggest a spring to summer movement north, so if that is true they might just be on their way. My better judgement says they wait around till the foliage is thicker before movement really begins, I think they hang around the southern Fox river area and gradually spread out and move into known feeding grounds, berries, tubers, all the stuff of early summer.

Edited March 12, 2015 by Lake County Bigfooot

March 12, 2015

I need some help identifying some whistles I heard in the woods for about three and a half months last winter (2013-2014).

Starting at the beginning of November, I realized I had started hearing whistles coming from the greenbelt/woods across from my apartment every night starting right after the sun went down. The whistles were always what I would describe as "call and response" type whistles. Where the call whistle would be one long note and the response would be one sharp note. In the week after I first heard them, they sounded extremely close to my apartment. One night, I heard the caller whistling but no response, so after a minute I did the response whistle and they answered immediately. So we traded whistles back and forth and I heard it coming closer and closer, but I never could see anything inside the tree line and eventually it stopped and I went back in.

The calls and responses eventually developed into two long whistles and one short whistle. The response whistle (single short whistle) was always the same. I sit out there listening every night and it seemed like the response whistle was always more or less stationary, i.e. the loudness would be pretty consistent for a good long time, while the caller whistles would grow more faint as if the caller was moving throughout the greenbelt and maybe the responder was helping it keep its bearings?

Eventually the calls and responses changed to three long whistles for the caller and one short whistle for the responder. One night, when we were having a few days of unseasonably warm weather, there were crickets singing. I heard the caller whistle in the woods fairly close to my apartment, trying to mimic the crickets. It was just out of sync enough with the background bug noises that it caught my attention and I knew it was one of the whistlers.

Anyway, that was the pattern throughout the winter. The whistles would start at sundown and go all through the night. I would sometimes hear them at dawn when I got up for work. No matter how late I stayed up, if I went outside on my balcony I would hear the whistlers. There were many nights when it was in the 20s, a few nights when it got down to the teens, most nights were in the 30s that winter. It was the longest, coldest winter I've experienced here. And those whistles were out there every single night, no matter how cold.

The whistles would change patterns sometimes, but there was always clearly a caller and a responder. I timed them once and the caller would whistle, around 5-6 seconds later the responder would whistle, and then about 11 seconds later the caller would whistle out again, on and on and on through the night.

On New Years Eve, the city fireworks show made it sound like a war zone at my apartment complex. The canyons in the greenbelt creek system magnified and echoed every sound. It was really intense. I heard the whistlers a couple of times, but they weren't doing their call and response pattern. Their whistles, when I heard them that night, sounded like the kind of whistle you would do if you were trying to get someone's attention. I was able to record that, but all the other times I tried to record the whistles, a car would go down the street and the sound would drown them out because of the acoustics of the creek system in my greenbelt, and it was really frustrating.

The whistles started to taper off around mid February, and by March I rarely heard them, and by April not at all. I haven't heard them this winter at all.

So I wonder if I could pick your collective brains to try and figure out what this was.

It didn't sound like any bird I know, and I'm really familiar with the birds in my area. I know mockingbirds will sing nocturnally sometimes, but they sing songs and I think that's more during the mating season, and these whistles that I've described weren't musical.

Could it have been some kind of owl? There are screech owls and great horned owls that I know of around hear and I've heard them both. Is there a kind of owl that whistles, rather than hoots? The great horned owls will do a call and response type of thing. I've heard one call out with three hoots, and another respond with two, and that went on for several minutes.

I can't think of any mammals or reptiles that would travel in pairs and communicate with whistles, but there's a lot I don't know.

Edited to add: I don't think it was people just because of how freaking COLD it was most of last winter. Like, brutally cold to those of us used to mild Central Texas winters. And because the whistling would go on all night--if homeless people in the woods were making those whistles, why would they stay out all night, and be mobile? It would be unbearable. Wouldn't you want to just find a place out of the wind and hunker down to conserve body heat? Or even better, find a homeless shelter? What would homeless people be looking for in the woods? I doubt there are many that know how to live off the land, much less find wild food sources in the dark. And it is DARK in those woods and canyons at night.

I've been chewing this over in my head ever since it started and was hesitant to bring it up here but I'm at a point where I would really like to solve the mystery if possible.

Thanks in advance to everyone who responds to my thread!

Edited March 12, 2015 by JenJen of Oldstones

March 12, 2015

Hey Jen Jen,

Good to see you posting. What you describe does sound like some sort of communication but I am not up on any birds that could make those sounds. It is interesting that the green belt you describe contains a creek and threads through a canyon. Could be a travel route but it is hard to know that just from a brief description.

I have come to realize that there are many signs that they are in or are passing through an area....tree breaks, small broken pointer arrow trees or branches, barricades, uprooted trees, and prints. Maybe take a little hike down to the creek to see what is there. You could get someone to go with you if you don't feel comfortable going alone.

March 13, 2015

Hey JenJen good to see you back

Like lightheart, I'm not up on all bird sounds but I'm wondering if any birds native to your area would be active in the winter--especially with temps as cold as you described. Actually I'd love to have those numbers here for night time lows LOL I'd also advise you to go looking for clues, during the day of course, anything that might suggest what was traipsing through the area. Of course, with time passed I doubt there'll be anything to go on but maybe next time? Just my 2 cents worth

March 13, 2015

well, first things first..... welcome Jen, good to see you around again.

IIRC, you're in a fairly well populated area so the possibilities are many, but the probability of its being something out of the ordinary may not be high...idk.

as to the whistles, without hearing them its harder to say.

fwiw, I know where you're coming from with this as I've heard some whistles I suspected of being "interesting" , but in out of the way places while hunting .

nothing definite , no visual , just a low one note whistle followed by a reply further out.... once followed by soft pop sound. at the end of the day, all it was an interesting "what the heck?" moment with nothing to show for it.

edit to add.... found this , maybe something sounds similar to yours for ideas? http://www.examiner.com/article/bigfoot-the-whistling-mouth

and no whistling thread would be complete without this thrown in https://coyotecooks.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/why-you-shouldnt-whistle-at-night/

Edited March 13, 2015 by Doc Holliday

March 13, 2015

Hi all and thanks for your input, I apologize for not responding sooner but I had a really busy day yesterday and was away from my computer.

Lightheart, I think the creek could definitely be a travel route for many creatures. There are big culverts (I think that's what those huge concrete drainage pipes are called) that link sections of the creek where the retention **** is and also where the street cuts the creek in half. I haven't really explored the creek because it's really brushy and in places the limestone bluffs come straight down to the water, so there's nowhere to walk. I've gotten a little less spooked by the woods this year and have been at least walking the trails but I'm too scared to go off trail for fear of getting lost. I haven't ever seen anything that looked like a stick structure. There are lots of broken trees, and many cedar trees along the trail that follows the creek are bent toward the water in a way that I always thought was interesting.

Aaron, hello! I'm trying to be more observant about things I see in the woods. Usually it's just deer tracks and deer and rabbit poop. Once I found a mound of leaves under a tree that apparently had a dead thing in it, which my dog discovered and immediately snarfed up before I could stop her. Related to winter temps, one of my friends who used to live in Austin and moved to Denver last summer said that when you're dealing with sub-zero temperatures, 30 degrees starts to feel pretty warm.

Hi Doc, thanks! I wish I could contribute more to the forums but I guess I just feel more comfortable lurking. Yes, I do live in a populated area. The green belt cuts through several suburban neighborhoods, and is part of a huge interconnected stream/tributary system that goes way out into the country. Do you really think being in a populated area means there are lots of possibilities for what is doing the whistling? Thanks for sharing your own experience. It's nice to know someone else knows what I'm talking about, even if not sure what is causing it. I'd say you probably heard a Bigfoot! Thanks for those links, they're amazing, especially the audio recording of the bigfoot and the researcher exchanging whistles! How did you ever find that?

I wish I could get more responses to my thread. Was this the most appropriate place to post my topic?

March 13, 2015

Your account is very interesting, have you checked out the Urban BF thread? I'd recommend trying some overnight audio recording. A good digital recorder doesn't cost terribly much these days, and it's easy and fascinating to hear all the stuff going on around us in the wee hours. The creek sounds cool too, maybe you could get in there with some good boots.

March 13, 2015

Hi JKH, I've followed the urban bigfoot thread for years and have found it very interesting. Maybe I'll poke my head in there and ask some of them to check out this thread and let me know what they think. I wanted to put this thread in the general Bigfoot discussion forum but since I don't KNOW that it's urban bigfoots doing the whistling, I was afraid the thread would get moved or that people would say, "WELL WHY ARE YOU ASKING US WHAT WE THINK YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE ALREADY DECIDED IT'S BIGFOOT."

I haven't heard the whistles at all this winter, which makes me sad. I looked through my files and I have four files that I recorded on New Year's eve 2013 where you can hear the whistles amongst the fireworks. You can only hear the single-note whistle, but it's something at least. I will upload them to YouTube when I get home this evening and post the link here if anyone is interested.

Can you recommend any particular inexpensive digital recorder model?

March 13, 2015

I've followed this thread for years but never had anything I could contribute. But maybe I do now... I posted a topic called Whistles in the Woods in the Campfire Chat section because I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate to put it here. If anyone here could check it out and give me your thoughts on what I've described, I would greatly appreciate it!!

March 13, 2015

I had to go back and read your OP again. I find the progression of the activity remarkable, and you describe it well. I think you may have had hairy visitors in the neighborhood, but I think they move around a lot. IMO, you could ask a mod to move this to the UB thread, it would fit. Patient observation in a small area often yields interesting evidence, good for you.

My recorder is a Sony pcm-m10, it's highly recommended. Bought it for a bit over $200 a few years ago. Other brands I've seen discussed are Tascam and Zoom.

Edited March 13, 2015 by JKH

March 13, 2015

That's not a bad idea, to ask the mods to move this thread to the Urban Bigfoot thread. I did post a reply there asking if people could come read this thread, but it would certainly be easier to just move it there.

It's really easy to patiently observe over long periods when you're sitting on your porch, sipping a cocktail, which is literally all I did to pursue it! I was deathly afraid to go into the woods, except for one very short trail through a little patch of woods easily within screaming distance of my apartments. :shout: Incidentally, that's where I found a big deer gut pile on Christmas morning. There was some fur, some blood-stained earth, a stomach, and some intestines in a pile. No footprints or anywhere that a deer could have been hung because the trees right around the gut pile don't have strong enough branches.

I don't have that same level of fear this year. I'm getting out more but do still get a little spooked when there's not a lot of bikers and hikers around. Not just because there might be bigfoots around (which I feel certain there aren't this year if there ever were), but because I'm always afraid there's someone in the woods waiting for someone just like me to come along and be raped/murdered. I'm also worried about coyotes, because they are sometimes seen during the day in this area.

ETA: Which mod would I contact to move the thread?

Edited March 13, 2015 by JenJen of Oldstones

March 13, 2015

Sorry, wasn't thinking. It would be easier to just c & p your OP over to there, if you'd like it there.

March 13, 2015

(It was suggested that I just copy and paste my post in the Campfire Chat here, so here it is)

I need some help identifying some whistles I heard in the woods for about three and a half months last winter (Nov 2013-Feb 2014).