What bird beeps at night?

A steady, high beep-beep-beep from the woods at night, about two notes a second and going on and on, is most likely a Northern Saw-whet Owl, a tiny owl whose song has been compared to a vehicle's back-up signal. A loud, nasal beep repeated every couple of seconds from the ground in an open field on a spring evening is a male American Woodcock. A nasal peent from high overhead around dusk, over a field or a city, is a Common Nighthawk.

Listen: the Northern Saw-whet Owl

This owl toots rather than hoots. Its song is a high toot repeated at about two notes per second, which one New Hampshire writer renders as toot-toot-toot or simply beep-beep-beep. BirdNote describes the male's advertising call as awfully repetitive, a bit like the back-up signal of a vehicle, and tells of a neighbor it kept awake most of the night. Older generations heard something else in it, the sound of a saw being sharpened on a whetstone, and that gave the bird its name. The song carries no more than about half a mile, so if you can hear it, the owl is not far away.

Saw-whets are common in forests across southern Canada and the northern United States, and in a state like New Hampshire they can be found in any month. The male calls mostly in spring and summer, and breeding there gets going in mid-March. They nest in tree cavities, often old woodpecker holes, or in nest boxes, and they roost under heavy cover; being nocturnal, they are seldom seen. If you do, it will be startlingly small: about eight inches tall with a wingspan near 19 inches, and less than three ounces, one of the smallest owls in North America. Besides the song they make whines, squeaks and high barks, though those are heard far less often.

The woodcock: a beep from the ground at dusk

If the beep comes from an open field, a clearing or a brushy swamp edge in spring, and each note is loud and buzzy rather than clean, you are hearing a male American Woodcock. Audubon calls it a nasal beeping call given on the ground, written as a loud bzeep!, much like a nighthawk's call and repeated about every two seconds during courtship. Then the bird goes up. On spring and summer nights the male performs a high, twisting sky dance, and the sound changes completely: musical twittering made by specially shaped wing feathers, then chippering, bubbling, chirping notes as he comes back down.

Woodcocks live in wet thickets, moist woods and brushy swamps, and they like a mix of forest and open fields, spending the day under the trees and the night out in the open. Audubon lists them across eastern Canada, the Great Lakes, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Plains, the Southeast, Florida and Texas.

The nighthawk: a beep from the sky

A nasal beep that comes from above, from a bird you may glimpse against the evening sky, is a Common Nighthawk. Audubon gives its call as a loud peent or pee-yah, heard mostly at dusk. Nighthawks forage hardest around dusk and dawn, but they also hunt by day and at night, perhaps especially when the moon is bright, and they feed on insects swarming around bright lights. They are birds of open country and often fly over cities and towns, where many now nest on flat gravel roofs, so the peent and the male's booming display dive, made by air rushing through his wing feathers at the bottom of a steep plunge, are familiar sounds over downtowns. The nighthawk spends the winter in South America, so this is a warm-season beep.

How to tell which one you heard

• Where it came from. From the woods or a dense stand of trees: saw-whet. From the ground in a field or clearing: woodcock. From overhead and moving: nighthawk.
• The rhythm. The owl beeps about twice a second, steadily, for a long time. The woodcock gives one buzzy beep every two seconds or so, then breaks off to fly. The nighthawk's calls come from a bird on the move overhead.
• The tone. The saw-whet's toot is clean and whistled. The woodcock's bzeep is buzzy and nasal. The nighthawk's peent is nasal too, but it comes from the sky.
• The hour and the season. A beeping that runs deep into the night in spring is the owl. A burst at dusk on a spring evening, ending in twittering wings, is the woodcock. Dusk in summer over town is the nighthawk.

If the beep is perfectly timed and coming from your ceiling, that is a smoke detector asking for a battery. For anything outside, a few seconds of recording helps. Warble can listen to that recording and name the bird, though one faint owl far back in the trees may leave it unsure.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.