Critter signals

This is a rat's hole.

I saw it during the tidy up of my garden inspired by my next door neighbour cutting back our boundary hedge. I have not seen the rat recently*, but I think I heard her in the green box, gnawing, and, sitting by the nest now, I just heard some rustling. Buji, on the other side of the conservatory window, responded by mewing.

Sounds have been interesting me. Son of Bob is doing a lot of singing. I have not heard his subsong much, but his visits have been fairly fleeting on these hot days. However, on the gardening day, he made repeated long whistles. I have heard similar from Mrs B in the past. He was crawling in the hedge debris - it was either before or after he'd caught a large moth which flapped so much he let it go. He went after it, then reappeared - too quick to have eaten it. Like the very active worms, maybe it scared him.

Anyway, those whistles... he has "cheeped" at me a couple of times, looking at me and cheeping. I have heard his sharp alarm calls, TUTCH-TUTCH. With song and subsong, that is five different sound types. I think the whistles are like a question, curiosity and some uncertainty. The cheeps... contact calls?

I hear tits and dunnocks make contact calls... they are cheep like. The dunnocks use two different ones: a cheep-whistle and a cheep-rumble. The latter seems calmer - more an "I'm here" with the former maybe a "Where are you?"

Magpies make a lot of sounds and yesterday I heard a rattle, which I then heard this morning from a different bird. I think they are like the squirrel tail-wave - "I've seen you!"

Talking of squirrels, they make those squeals, like baby raptors, and barks, and the eerie and loud combination of the two. But this morning, a squirrel came onto the green box while I was sitting on the path. She didn't see me as she contentedly ate. Then she noticed me and sat on her haunches, holding her nut in her paws. She ate it then waved her tail. I expected her to run, which is what they usually do when they notice me, but she approached, growling! The growl was very low and more like a purr, but it was a growl. Then she left.

Finally, out with Clare last night, we heard common pipistrelles and perhaps a noctule on the bat detector. She had asked me what a particular screech and hissing sound were so I was going through the Merlin app trying out barn owl noises. As we were playing the sounds, we heard one of them from right above us in the ash tree. We both screamed and fell back laughing in relief and residual fear. Yes, definitely a barn owl!

*The day after I wrote this, Ratty was on the patio.