Loud Exotic-Sounding Bird Heard in the Middle of Oxford

Hi, this evening I heard this bird call near Oxford's natural history Museum at around 8pm. It was very loud! It has a distinctive call which repeated about once a minute or so (I'm 100% sure this is all one bird), almost like a Kookaburra at some points

What do you think it is?

(sorry for the talking over the recording!)

  • Hi & welcome to the community ... just a suggestion, does anyone nearby keep Peacocks?
  • This guy was about five or six floors up on the roof of the science department unfortunately I couldn't get a look at it because it was too dark
  • I think it could be the alarm call of a Peregrine Falcon. Have a listen to this recording.

    Albert Lastukhin & Yuri Glushchenko, XC344930. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/344930

    It would fit with the location of five or six floors up.

  • The Falcon has an interesting call but I'm not sure it's a match - a distinctive feature of this one was how much it could change it's call over a single song, it seems to have quite a wide vocal range!
  • Hi and welcome to the community from me too.  After hearing your recording I can only agree with Tony as it sounds more like a Peregrine falcon.  Unless someone nearby has an aviary with exotic species or there is a wildlife hospital/rehabilitation facility in the area where they treat all sorts of birds/animals. 

  • Interesting, a few suggestions,
    not so sure a Peregrine, scroll within link for sounds....,(www.hbw.com/.../sounds)

    wonder if a Red Kite in distress

    Maybe the Local Oxford Birding groups could also help.

  • This exact same call happens EVERY evening outside the natural history museum in Oxford! I have been trying to work it out. Recorded it with eBird and it came out with no suggestions! I don't think the falcon quite fits. So curious
  • Hey thanks for replying, interesting it’s there too! Here’s my guess now: it’s a recording of many different birds, probably birds of prey, played out loud at night to scare away pigeons and others which might roost and damage the brickwork (beats ugly metal spikes everywhere!)

  • I tried googling and found products that do this, and they have some similar calls included
    www.youtube.com/watch
  • Oh wow, that hadn't even occurred to me! Yes- my recording (below) perfectly matches some of that video. Not the answer I was hoping for (I was hoping to have stumbled across a rare find haha) but this makes perfect sense with the regularity of time/ location of the sound. I wonder why this deterrent is played here- seems very odd considering the university parks right next door. Perhaps something to do with the college. I think I might email round to investigate further!