It’s been a long hot summer, so there has been many a night where we have slept with our windows open – thanks to our fly screens which we fitted last year.

I started to notice that there are so many sounds of the night, some recognisable and others not. There was one in particular that had me really puzzled. Unlike the sound of crickets, which always make a noise, this one came and went and unfortunately wasn’t loud enough to make a recording.

Thinking about it, I thought that it probably wasn’t an insect and could only think it must be a bird. Apart from bats the only other bird I could think of was an Owl.

After doing lots of searches on the internet for owl sounds, I eventually found what I was looking for.

The Tawny Owl “Warble”. Thanks to the Gods Own Clay website which published all the information about tawny owls, I identified the sound.

We have a Tawny Owl who announces himself each night with a shrieking call.

Another mystery of the countryside solved.