[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlGw2cSuP7Y?feature=oembed&w=500&h=374]

If you would like to hear a noise that is even more ungodly than a fox’s bark when heard in a dark forest at night…meet the barn owl.

This is a defensive call.  Barn owls make it when they feel bothered or threatened.  In this case, probably it was a warning to the humans who were filming it, but clearly the owl didn’t feel too inconvenienced, since it moved on to preening.

I once met a falconer with her barn owl.  He just sat there and screeched to himself the whole time—not as loud, but dear god.  The whole time. More like this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ei753Qb5lg]

After about a minute, I said, “That is the loudest silent killing machine I’ve ever heard.”

She said, “Oh my god, he never stops.  I was once in the car with him for a five hour drive to a gig, and he did that the entire way.  Every so often he’d pause to breathe, and I would think to myself, oh please oh please oh please.  And then he’d start up again.”

(My guess is that that was a juvenile behavior he never grew out of.  Owlets, like many other baby birds, vocalize a lot.  As a falconer’s bird, he was raised by humans, and when that happens, sometimes an animal will hang on to some of its baby noises.  Probably because we respond so well when our pets make demanding noises at us.)