I do a lot of back country hiking. I enjoy doing overnight trips and hiking up mountain peaks and feel fairly experienced with the ambient sounds of the forest. Identifying birds by their calls is also something I’m good at.
The last two days I went hiking a different way and this one particular area started giving me the heebie jeebies. It felt different and sounded different. There was also this single, loud chirp that I could not identify. There’s no local bird that sounds like that. I found myself stopping and turning around feeling like, if I stood there long enough and looked, I’d see something move or watching me.
I don’t believe in anything paranormal but I started thinking that, if I did, this area of the forest would be haunted. I walked through it four times and the last time I was dreading it. Same weird feeling, same loud, single chirp.
Once I was home (I live out in the boonies so I just head off into the forest from my yard) I was scrolling through facebook and somebody posted that a cougar had killed somebody’s cat in the area. I did a youtube search for cougar sounds and sure enough, the very first sound was that exact same single, loud chirp!
I’ve linked to the video below. So that’s what the problem was all along. My instincts were telling me that there was a predator close by. Kind of validates how I was feeling but I’d rather have not been hiking 50 feet away from a cougar!
That is weird. It’s like that first one just swallowed Tweety.
I don’t hike in the back country (or even the nearby country). I now feel better about that.
There are occasional stories on local TV news about wildcat/cougar sightings in suburbs that are near forested or otherwise unsettled areas. It’s always someone’s porch camera catching a large cat shape strolling down the sidewalk, too blurry and quick to see much. These are invariably without sound, so us urban folk would have no idea what that sound was either.
I have found that night hiking, especially full moon hiking without a headlamp, is a great reminder that we not always at the top of the food chain.
I was recently reminded of a time camping in the Tetons. I heard a noise outside the tent and peaked out to find that we were surrounded by a heard of Elk, blissfully ignoring our campsite. The next campsite, while pumping water from a nearby lake, I spotted a bear and cubs on the opposite shore also blissfully ignoring us. But we packed up and moved on pretty quickly.
A woman jogger was killed by a wild cat (can’t remember specifically which breed). It had apparently been stalking her and attacked from behind. Scary.
At least this cougar gives a bit of a warning. And it really does sound like a bird chirp!
You were probably in more danger of the elk stampeding through your campsite (has actually happened to me) than the bears messing with you. Provided, of course, that you were following good food storage and kitchen hygiene, and the bears were not habituated by other campers leaving food and waste out, or luring them in to get a picture. Bears, even grizzlies, generally avoid confrontation with people when they can. Quite honestly, in the Grand Tetons the large animals I would be most concerned about are the bison; those things can go from indifferent to enraged and barreling down at you at 35 mph in a heartbeat, and a bison cow defending her calf is even more aggressive than a grizzly sow with cubs (provided you aren’t literally standing between her and the cubs).
Not my experience but some coworkers were hiking somewhere around Whitney Portal and had bedded down for the night (no tent, just in bivvy sacks) on a nearly moonless sky when some large creature, which they estimated to be the size of a light aircraft, swooped over their campsite in almost complete silence. I’m pretty sure it was probably a Great Grey Owl, whose size seemed exaggerated by how closely it swooped on them but it is still pretty freaky to have large birds flying that close.
I’ve lived around a cougar. They make a variety of eerie noises. The cough when they are disappointed of a strike, for one. And they are incredibly silent.
One of the scariest things that ever happened to me hiking was when we were woken by a barn owl perched on our tent. We just about jumped out of our skins. At that range they sound like the angel of death.
Another time I was woken by a herd of cows walking through camp in the middle of the night. Also terrifying to wake up to in the dark.
By the way, cougar attacks are so rare there have only been a handful recorded in history. I believe there have been 28 fatalities altogether since the early 19th century.
Twice in my life I’ve had owls swoop very close to me. Once, it was a Great Horned Owl when I was out walking our dachshund around 9 pm in our suburban neighborhood. The other was a Barn Owl that glided over our heads as a friend and I were walking back to our farmhouse B-n-B in Cornwall. The creepy thing about both was how big both birds seemed (esp. the GHO) and how freaking quiet they were. Not a sound.
I had a barn owl swoop at me years ago while outside at night. Then I noticed the dead rabbit ahead of me in the road and I guess the owl was protecting its kill. But it came right at me, feet first and claws out.
Owls have an unexpectedly large wingspan, and if you catch the eyes glowing they look like some kind of mythical roc. I’ve never had one come that close but unlike falcons and hawks that tend to dive down on prey, owls typically make a slow, silent glide which perceptually makes them seem larger than they really are.
Have you ever seen domestic cats ‘talking’ to birds?
Well, yes, but virtually all of these deaths occur on a farm or ranch in the course of normal interaction between the cow and its owner/handler. Not in a campground in the mountains or on a trail in a national park.
This barred owl swooped me when I was on a trail run, then perched in the tree above, probably to make sure I didn’t steal a potential mate. The eyes are pretty cool.
