Some animal out in our yard/woods makes these strange noises at night. I don’t know if it’s every night, but I hear it probably a few times a week at least. What is it?
Based on the sounds on this screech owl page, I don’t think that’s it. The screech owl sound is pretty and smooth. The weird animal sound around here is freakish and choppy. Unfortunately my recording of it didn’t capture any of the long variations, which are just totally alien and almost painful sounding. I’ll try to record them again next time I hear it.
I just re-listened to my recording in the first post here, and realized it’s pretty quiet. You may have to turn your volume up loud to hear the noises. They occur at the 9-second mark, then at 19, 22, 41, and 45 seconds.
That’s closer, but still not quite right. The "softfight.wav" recording on that page actually sounds sorta similar, except way more frantic; the sound around here is freakish, but not quite spastic like that, and it sounds like just a single animal.