Night Sounds

Nights here in the Montagne Noire are hushed and dark. The only sounds are the tolling of the church bell every half hour, the warbling of the Rieutort River, and the hooting of the owls. I'm going to try to capture these sounds tonight.

I'm told that there are two kinds of owls, or chouette, here: la effraie (the barn owl) and la hulotte (the tawny owl).

La hulotte

La effraie

Those that I hear in  conversation just before dawn every morning might be hulottes; they sound like a cross between an owl and a morning dove. Their call is eerier and more exotic than those of the owls in my Home Forest: the great horned owl ("who-who-who-cooks-for-you?") and the barred owl ("who-cooks-for-you? who-cooks-for-you-all?").

You can listen to these and other owl calls on The Owl Pages.