Which bird sounds like it is laughing?

A loud, wild laugh from the woods is usually a Pileated Woodpecker, whose rapid cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk rises and then falls, or a Northern Flicker, whose long ki-ki-ki-ki is a steadier, thinner laugh. After dark, a fit of cackling and screaming in the woods is a pair of Barred Owls. At the beach, the Laughing Gull earned its name with a high ha-ha-ha-haah-haah, and the bigger Herring Gull has a rollicking call of its own. On a northern lake, the wavering laugh is a Common Loon.

How to tell them apart

• Where are you? Big trees mean a woodpecker or an owl. Salt water means a gull. A quiet lake up north means a loon.
• What time is it? Woodpeckers and gulls laugh by day. A Barred Owl laughs at night, usually between dusk and dawn. Loons do it at any hour but more after dark.
• Does it rise and fall? The Pileated Woodpecker's call swells and then trails off. The flicker holds one pitch and one volume for a long run.
• Does it end in a scream? Cackling that collapses into cat-like screams and gurgles is an owl, not a bird of the daylight.

The woodpeckers: pileated and flicker

The Pileated Woodpecker is the biggest woodpecker in North America, a crow-sized black bird with a flaming red crest and a white stripe down the neck, and it has a voice to match. Its loud, rapid-fire cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk rises and then falls in both pitch and volume, and Missouri's conservation department describes it as sounding a little like maniacal laughter. It lives in mature forest and, increasingly, in suburbs with big trees, where it digs out carpenter ants and hammers on dead wood with a slow, deep drum roll lasting about three seconds. If you grew up on cartoons, note that Woody Woodpecker's look was modeled on this bird, though his laugh was patterned on the Acorn Woodpecker.

The Northern Flicker is a brown, barred woodpecker with a black chest patch and a spotted belly, more often seen hopping on a lawn than clinging to a trunk, because it eats more ants than any other bird on the continent. Its long call is a sustained laugh, ki-ki-ki-ki-ki, held steady rather than rising and falling, and in spring it adds a loud wicka-wicka-wicka for courtship, similar in shape to the pileated's call but without the resonance and volume. It also drums on trees and, when it can, on metal, because a chimney cap or a gutter carries farther.

The night laugher: Barred Owl

If the laughing happens after dark and gets out of hand, it is a pair of Barred Owls. The familiar call is the eight-note who cooks for you, who cooks for you all, but when two birds get going they break into cackling, gurgling and cat-like screams that ornithologists have described as sudden demonic laughter. Barred Owls call mostly between 6 pm and 6 am, with a peak that runs from late January in Florida to early April in Canada, and they favor swampy bottomland and old mixed woods across the East, the Pacific Northwest, and increasingly suburbs with mature trees.

The gulls: Laughing Gull and Herring Gull

The Laughing Gull is the only one of these birds that was actually named for the sound. Its loud, high ha-ha-ha-ha-haah-haah-haah is one of the signature noises of tidewater along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in summer, over salt marshes, beaches, piers and boardwalks. It is a crow-sized gull with a dark gray back, black wingtips and, in summer, a full black hood and a dark red bill. It rarely strays far inland, so a laughing gull-like call in the middle of the country is more likely one of the woodpeckers above.

The Herring Gull is the big pink-legged gull with a red spot on its yellow bill, found year-round from New England through the Great Lakes and along the coasts, and just as happily in parking lots and dumps. Its long call is a series of loud notes given with the head dipped and then thrown back, written by Audubon as a rollicking kuk-kuk-kuk, yucca-yucca-yucca, and it also gives a quick hahaha when something threatens it. It is more of a bugling shout than a giggle, but from a distance it gets called a laugh.

The lake laugher: Common Loon

On a wooded northern lake in early summer, the laugh is a Common Loon. Loons have four calls, and the one that sounds like laughter is the tremolo: short and wavering, it signals alarm or distress and is the only call a loon gives in flight. The long, wolf-like wail keeps a pair in touch, the yodel is the male's territorial claim, and a soft hoot passes between family members. Loons are most vocal from mid-May to mid-June and call more at night than by day, on lakes in New England, the Great Lakes states and Alaska.

The ones that only sort of laugh

An American Crow gives a short rattling song in courtship and a Belted Kingfisher announces itself with a loud, penetrating rattle over the water, and both get described as laughing in the moment. The field guides call them rattles, not laughs, so treat them as runners-up: a dry, mechanical rattle from a wire or a streamside snag is one of these two, while anything with real ha-ha syllables is on the list above.

How to settle it

Two woodpeckers, an owl, two gulls and a loon is a short list, and place and time of day cut it down to one or two. If you want to be sure, open Warble while the bird is still going and let it listen through a full laugh; the woodpeckers in particular repeat themselves, so you will usually get a second chance.

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Warble is a game, not a field guide. Where this page states a fact about a bird, it comes from the sources above.