What bird sounds like a monkey?

If the monkey noises come from the woods at night, the likeliest source is a pair of Barred Owls: among their dozen-plus calls is one that BirdNote simply calls the monkey call, and pairs answer each other back and forth through the trees. In daylight, a loud, chattering call from a woodpecker is a strong candidate: the Pileated Woodpecker has been described as sounding more like a chattering monkey than a bird, and the Northern Flicker has a loud spring call that one birder describes as a jungle call.

Listen: Barred Owls after dark

Most people know the Barred Owl from its signature hoot, the rhythm birders remember as who cooks for you, who cooks for you all. But that is only one of more than a dozen Barred Owl calls. A BirdNote segment published by Audubon runs through a few of them, from what it calls a siren call to a wail to a monkey call that it describes as wonderfully entertaining. If you heard something like a troop of monkeys arguing in the trees after dark, that may well be the call you heard.

These owls rarely perform alone. Mated pairs answer each other, and in the nesting season they call in duet, which is why the noise can seem to come from two places at once. Audubon's field guide also mentions a range of barking calls and screams on top of the hoots, so one night can produce a whole menagerie.

Barred Owls live year-round in dense, thick woods, especially low, wet places like wooded river bottoms and swamps. They are mostly nocturnal, but they call by day too. They have long been a voice of eastern forests and are relative newcomers to the western United States.

By day: two woodpeckers

The Pileated Woodpecker is the daytime suspect. An Appalachian Voices article summed it up: the call always struck the writer as jungle-like, closer to a chattering monkey than a chirping bird. The bird also drums on trees hard enough to sound like an actual drum, and both the call and the drumming are especially noticeable in winter. Look for it in woods near streams with a tall, closed canopy and plenty of decaying trunks, across eastern North America and in forested parts of the West.

The Northern Flicker is the other suspect, especially in spring. Birder and blogger Kate St. John notes that both male and female flickers give what she describes as a jungle call and drum loudly to attract a mate and claim a territory. The reference she quotes, Birds of the World, says that long call and the drumming can carry more than a kilometer, and that the loud advertising lasts only a few weeks in spring. City flickers have figured out that metal is louder than wood, so the drumming may come from a metal light hood rather than a tree.

How to tell which one you heard

• Night, deep woods, hoots, barks and screams, sometimes two voices at once: Barred Owls.
• Daytime in tall woods near a stream, a loud chattering call, especially in winter, plus loud drumming: Pileated Woodpecker.
• Spring, loud calls for a few weeks, maybe drumming on metal in town: Northern Flicker.

If you catch the sound on your phone, Warble can listen and tell you which of the three is carrying on.

Questions people ask

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