What Bird Sounds Like That? 20 Sounds and Mnemonics Decoded

This is the single most searched bird sound description, and in the southeastern US the answer is usually a Brown-headed Nuthatch. They sound genuinely like someone squeezing a rubber bath toy, over and over, high in pine woods. Flocks call constantly while they forage upside down on pine trunks.

Where: Pine forests of the southeastern US, roughly Virginia to Texas and down through Florida. If you are outside that range and hearing a squeaky toy, read the next two entries.

The classic field-guide description for this bird is literally a squeaky wheel. It is a thin, high, two-note squeak repeated six to ten times, so faint that many people only notice it once they know to listen. The bird itself creeps along trunks and branches like a nuthatch, striped black and white.

When: Spring and summer across the eastern US and Canada, and during migration well beyond that.

This one is named for the sound. If you hear what seems like a cat in a hedge and no cat appears, it is almost certainly a Gray Catbird. They skulk in dense shrubs and thickets, so you hear them far more often than you see them.

Catbirds are also mimics, related to mockingbirds and thrashers, so the mew is often mixed into long rambling songs full of borrowed phrases.

The familiar Barred Owl hoot has a well-known rhythm that birders render as who cooks for you, who cooks for you all. But when a pair gets going together they produce something completely different: a wild caterwauling of hoots, barks, cackles and howls that people reliably describe as monkeys, or as someone being murdered in the woods.

A Pileated Woodpecker's loud ringing call is the other common answer to what bird sounds like a monkey, especially in daylight.

A rapid hammering burst is usually a woodpecker drumming rather than calling, and the machine-gun quality comes from what it is drumming on. Flickers and other woodpeckers deliberately choose resonant surfaces, which in a neighbourhood means metal gutters, chimney caps, flashing and satellite dishes.

This is territorial signalling, not feeding, and it is loudest in spring. The bird is not damaging your house by drumming on metal, though it is worth checking wood siding for actual excavation.

Heard almost always near water, and usually from a bird already flying away from you. The rattle is harsh, dry and unmistakable once you connect it to the big-headed, shaggy-crested bird flying fast and low along a creek.

If you are near water and hearing a rattle, this is the first thing to check.

Despite the name, this small owl does not screech. It has two main sounds: a soft descending whinny that really does resemble a small horse, and a monotone trill on one pitch. Both carry surprisingly far on still nights.

They are common in suburbs and city parks, nesting in tree cavities and nest boxes, and are far more often heard than seen.

Astonishingly loud for a bird this small. The standard mnemonic is teakettle teakettle teakettle, but plenty of people hear it as cheater cheater cheater or germany germany germany, which is why it shows up under all those searches.

Carolina Wrens sing year-round, including in winter, which sets them apart from most songbirds.

Cardinals have a wide repertoire of clear, slurred whistles, which is why they turn up under so many different mnemonics. They also give a sharp metallic chip that people often describe as electronic.

Unusually among North American songbirds, female cardinals sing too, often from the nest.

A clear, whistled two-note phrase repeated several times. Easy to confuse with a Carolina Wren at first, but the titmouse phrase is simpler and more whistled, where the wren is rolling and burry.

A warbler that walks on the forest floor rather than flitting in the canopy. The song builds in volume as it repeats, which is the giveaway. In eastern woodlands in June it can be the loudest sound in the forest.

Two short notes and then a trill. Towhees also give a rising chewink call, and they make a lot of noise scratching in dry leaves under shrubs, which often draws attention before the song does.

A pure, wavering whistle, and one of the most evocative sounds of the northern woods. Americans traditionally hear Old Sam Peabody; Canadians hear O sweet Canada Canada. Same bird, same song.

Common at feeders across the eastern US in winter, so you may hear it far from the breeding forest.

A rolling three-syllable phrase repeated from dense low cover, usually in wet, weedy places. The male has a black bandit mask, but you will rarely get a clear look before you have already learned the song.

Two completely different sounds from the same bird. The chick-a-dee-dee-dee call is the familiar one, and the number of dee notes actually rises with the level of threat the flock perceives. The song is a simple two-note whistle, high then low, which many people hear as cheeseburger.

Do not confuse the fee-bee whistle with the Eastern Phoebe, which says its own name in a much burrier, more emphatic voice.

This is the single most common misidentification in backyard birding. The soft, sad cooing that people report as an owl during the day is almost always a Mourning Dove. Real owls are mostly nocturnal, and their hoots are lower and more rhythmic.

Their wings also make a sharp whistling sound on takeoff, which is a separate mystery sound people ask about.

Loud, piercing, and often heard at night while migrating overhead or circling parking lots and playing fields. Killdeer nest on bare gravel, including driveways and flat roofs, and will do a broken-wing display to lure you away from the nest.

Whip-poor-wills and Eastern Wood-Pewees also say their own names, if the sound you heard was not this one.

Blue Jays regularly imitate hawks, especially Red-shouldered Hawks, and they do it well enough to fool experienced birders. The usual explanation is that it clears the feeder of competitors, though jays also seem to do it for no obvious reason.

Their own calls range from the harsh jay jay scream to a surprisingly musical bell-like note.

One of the first sounds of spring across most of North America. Males sing from cattails and roadside ditches while flaring red shoulder patches. In summer they will dive-bomb anyone walking near a nest.

A rising and falling series of clear whistled phrases, and often the first bird singing before dawn and the last at dusk. Robins also sing at night under streetlights, which sends a lot of people searching for owls.

A smoke or CO detector with a low battery. This is the most common false alarm of all. The giveaway is the interval: it is mechanically regular, and it continues at 3am with no variation. No bird calls on a precise timer for hours. Check every detector in the house, including ones in basements and spare rooms you rarely enter.

Cicadas. Often mistaken for a bird or even a power line problem. It rises and falls, is loudest in mid to late summer afternoons, and stops abruptly at dusk.

Spring peepers and other chorus frogs. Very commonly reported as a bird. The tell is timing and place: a wetland or ditch, at dusk, in the first warm nights of spring, with dozens of voices at once rather than one bird repeating.

Squirrels, mice, or bats. If the sound comes from inside the structure rather than outside it, and includes scratching or scurrying, it is a mammal. Chimney Swifts are the exception worth knowing: they genuinely do nest in chimneys and make a rolling chittering.

In the southeastern United States it is almost always a Brown-headed Nuthatch, which sounds like a rubber bath toy being squeezed repeatedly in pine woods. Elsewhere, the most likely candidate is a Black-and-white Warbler, whose thin repeated song is traditionally described as a squeaky wheel.

A rapid mechanical burst is usually a woodpecker drumming rather than calling. Northern Flickers and other woodpeckers deliberately choose resonant surfaces to drum on, and in neighbourhoods that means metal gutters, chimney caps and flashing. It is territorial signalling and it peaks in spring.

The Gray Catbird, which is named for exactly that. It gives a drawn-out complaining mew from inside dense shrubs, so people usually hear it long before they see it.

A pair of Barred Owls calling together produce a wild caterwauling of hoots, cackles and howls that is commonly described as monkeys. In daylight, the loud ringing call of a Pileated Woodpecker is the other frequent answer.

The Barred Owl. The full phrase birders use is who cooks for you, who cooks for you all, and it matches the rhythm of the hoots closely.

Most daytime owl-like cooing is a Mourning Dove, not an owl. This is the most common misidentification in backyard birding. Owls are largely nocturnal and their hoots are lower and more rhythmic than a dove's soft coo-OO-oo.

That is very likely a smoke or carbon monoxide detector with a low battery, not a bird. A single short chirp at a regular interval, indoors, day and night, is the classic pattern. Birds do not call on a precise timer.