Sounds Of The Night

[Lake County Bigfooot]

some big woodpeckers that slam wood on wood, I have heard some louder piliated knocking, but even that is nothing to compare to my experience of thses guys

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Being the dummy I am, last week I tried a tarzan manuver off my shed using a willow tree branch. Of course it snapped and I was on the ground in an instant after wacking my head and back really good, thankfully I am only sore and not paralyzed or nursing a more serious injury. That lead me to not being able to lay on my back or sleep in bed for three days, so I slept fitfully in my recliner upright. Not being able to sleep that well the woodlnocks were enough to keep me from sleeping much at all the first night at 3:05am 5 knocks, second night 5 at 1:15 am, next night 5 at 3:44 am, and the next night 8 or so steady around 1:20 am. I found the toe imprints on Saturday morning. I recorded from 11pm last night.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[southernyahoo]

Yeah, there are those crazy woodpeckers that stay up all night and will knock a tree hard, but just once or twice. They must get stronger at night, but tire more easily.

[Guest Cryptic Megafauna]

Treefall is another possibility.

Branches are falling often in forests.

If you hear a noise but don't see the maker of the noise you run into the same problem as with vocalizations.

Lack of confirmation. 

 

Most have a confirmation bias, they assume.

Now we have the Sierra sounds, a case in point.

 

Doesn't mean biggie didn't but also doesn't mean biggie did.

Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

[Lake County Bigfooot]

check out this woodpecker...an interesting observation. My elderly neighbor sits up smoking and coughing on his porch at night, the wood nocks seem to be in response to his coughing. I heard the same pattern as in this recording the other night, my neighbor coughs and soon after the wood nocks follow from a different location. I know what some of you will say, it is my neighbor knocking. I have ruled that out as I have heard them too close together from too far apart, he is not amble, he is stationary. He might be up trying to hear them or see them, I think he knows they are present, and maybe they are interested in him being up at that time as well. From the den in the video there is a view of my neighbors house, like a cleared out little path. I think I will set the recorder very close to the action near the den tonight, but hidden.

five wood knocks.mp3

Edited June 27, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[JKH]

Yeah, there are those crazy woodpeckers that stay up all night and will knock a tree hard, but just once or twice. They must get stronger at night, but tire more easily.

 

LOL, yes, like the one that tapped on my recorder four times at about 11, four at 12, and three at 1 at night. I THINK that incident was because I'd flipped the device over so the red light didn't show as it had many times before.

[JKH]

Discerning known animals from BFs is a good thing, it's part of the discussion here, but what about all the non-canine howls? Not to mention all the other behavioral audio that has been gathered and yes, observed. Audio recording has immense value in documenting communications and geographical use, and biologists around the world know it.  I'm going to drop off some links here that may be of interest to some.

 

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/elephant/cyclotis/language/infrasound.html

 

http://www.xeno-canto.org/

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/w-pot082012.php

 

 

I will quickly summarize what is vision in Gibson’s ecological view. Illumination sources (the sun) produce light rays that are reflected by objects. More precisely, light is reflected by the surface of objects with the medium (air, or possibly water). What is available for visual perception are surfaces and their properties (color, texture, shape…). Both the illumination sources and the surfaces in the environment are generally persistent. The observer can move, and this changes the light rays received by the retina. But these changes are highly structured because the surfaces persist, and this structure is informative of the surfaces in the environment. Thus what the visual system perceives is the arrangement and properties of persistent surfaces. Persistence is crucial here, because it allows the observer to use its own movements to learn about the world – in the sensorimotor account of perception, perception is precisely the implicit knowledge of the effect of one’s actions on sensory signals.

 

On the other hand, sounds are produced by the mechanical vibration of objects. This means that sounds convey information about volumes rather than surfaces. They depend on the shape but also on the material and internal structure of objects. It also means that what is perceived in sounds is the source of the waves rather than their interaction with the environment. Crucially, contrary to vision, the observer cannot directly interact with sound waves, because a sound happens, it is not persistent. An observer can produce a sound wave, for example by hitting an object, but once the sound is produced there is no possible further interaction with it. The observer cannot move to analyze the structure of acoustic signals. The only available information is in the sound signal itself. In this sense, sounds are events.

 

These ecological observations highlight major differences between vision and hearing, which go beyond the physical basis of these two senses (light waves and acoustic waves). Vision is the perception of persistent surfaces. Hearing is essentially the perception of mechanical events on volumes. These remarks are independent from the fact that vision is mediated by a retina and hearing by a cochlea.

 

http://briansimulator.org/what-is-sound/

 

I want this book specifically for the chapters on sound communications, but it's expensive, maybe someday.

 

http://www.sinauer.com/media/wysiwyg/tocs/PrinciplesAnimalCommunication2.pdf

 

I could go on with all my bookmarks, but maybe it's best for others to find their own.

[southernyahoo]

Treefall is another possibility.

Branches are falling often in forests.

If you hear a noise but don't see the maker of the noise you run into the same problem as with vocalizations.

Lack of confirmation.

Most have a confirmation bias, they assume.

Now we have the Sierra sounds, a case in point.

Doesn't mean biggie didn't but also doesn't mean biggie did.

Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

I've been close enough to a wood knock to have heard the falling branch crash to the ground, and it didn't happen. It doesn't explain some of the knocks.

[MIB]

Plussed.   Absolutely.  

 

The sharpness of the crack is an indicator of velocity.   If the velocity exceeds what gravity can produce given the height of available trees, something with hands becomes a more rational bet than some kind of local gravity anomaly.    Then, if other things falling go THUMP thump as they hit, bounce, and fall again, then that sharp-cracking high velocity thing doesn't ... there's another pretty good bet.  

 

Not every branch that breaks or thing that makes a knock in the forest is a sasquatch.   I'm only confident of 3 that I've heard.   There may have been more, I've had ye olde eyebrow raise a few more times, but they weren't CERTAIN.   The 3 are CERTAIN.  I think it is a safe bet in other places, other conditions, with other people, that's a lot more frequent.

 

MIB

[Lake County Bigfooot]

what I am certain about is that something with hands is the culprit, I cannot absolutely rule out human interference but I have itdown to a very slim percentage of what is responsible. It is very disturbing to deal with it in your own backyard!

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Right now I am dealing with frustration 101, my rechargeable batteries having been crapping out on me at about 3-4 hours, that is really lame on my part, but I never had this problem with them. I will definitely be making a stop at the store. In those four hours of recording I have gotten little, and not what I heard the last few nights, so dang it....I use those Duracell rechargeable batteries to save on cost, I usually get about 12 hours of continuous recording off a charge, not so much after a couple years I guess. Moral of the story, replace batteries every year before prime recording presents itself. It is like when you go fishing and all of the sudden the bite is on, you know exactly where to cast your lure to catch a huge fish and your line in your reel starts acting up, your casts fall short, you scare away the fish...next time you come better prepared. Now my wife just told me she heard 5 knocks at 4:23am, roughly two and 1/2 hours after my battery crapped out....urrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh........

Edited June 29, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Alright, I finally got a full nights recording, so I will get back to you with some clips hopefully. I heard some distressed animal crying out at about 2:30am it woke me up actually. It sounded like an extra ordinary good night to record with little wind and cool conditions...So right now I am drinking my coffee and loading up the file to my NCH software, which has a nice scrubbing feature to pan over areas of interest, although I have found you can easily miss stuff if your not really careful.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Last nights recording did not disappoint, I am 5 hours into the first 8 and this is what I have so far,

1. something large enters area around midnight

2. tree snap and possible thrown item toward recorder

3. something playing with sticks seemingly testing them for knocking qualities

4. 8 solid tree knocks at 2:50 am

5. Just after 3pm a deer in definite distress, likely killed.

 

I need a little time in my busy golf pro life to work on the clips and put this all together, but I got it all in digital and who knows what the next few hours and nights will hold....

Edited July 1, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[JKH]

Sounds interesting for sure, will appreciate listening. I haven't recorded in awhile due to unsettled weather and haven't tried the new recorder yet. Looking at an interesting area that was logged a few years ago near a creek. Last year there I observed a buck rubbing and a fawn strolling around, it's connected to the area where I had what seemed to be an approach of something large which examined the recorder.

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Well here are the two clips that make up the crux of last night, I did not find anything else after all the stuff between 12 and 3am, read the above time line and place these two accordingly, the clips of the other things in the timeline are too subjective for me to include, these two are definitive in nature...you will also here the heron rookery in summer form, the buzz in the recording is a very nearby cell tower. First at about 2:10am I hear the knocks, and then about 18 minutes later the deer distress call. The other sounds took place between 12 and 2am. Actually the deer distress call woke me up from sound sleep with my window open, I also sleep with a noisy Cpap so it was actually quite loud and haunting as the recording captures. The stillness and coolness seems to have contributed to the eerie quality of the deer distress call.

8 tree knocks.mp3

deer in distress.mp3

Edited July 1, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot