• a whiny cat - gray catbird
• a persistent, hollow-sounding "pluck...pluck...pluck...pluck" - Eastern chipmunk 
• clicking in the trees - greater anglewing
• a breathy, inhaled "screech!" in the night  - great horned owl (particularly the young begging for food.)
• A harsh, "screeee!" during the day - Eastern gray squirrel 
• something that's in a horrible shrieking fight - common raccoon 
• horrifying "scream" - red fox
• something tapping a block of wood - yellow-billed cuckoo
• meowing, but it isn't a cat - either gray catbird or yellow-bellied sapsucker
• a rusty hinge - ring-necked pheasant or blue jay
• a very high-pitched "EEeeeee" - Almost always an American robin alarm call. Sometimes cedar waxwing, brown creeper, or golden-crowned kinglet

Non-Insect:

Usually great horned owls. While the adult's hooting is easy to recognize, the juveniles make several strange, breathy or scratchy vocalizations when begging for food. 

Common raccoon recordings are also commonly sent in, especially their loud shrieking fights. 

Other common nocturnal mystery IDs have ended up being barred owl (goofy sounding or sometimes chaotic caterwauling,) eastern screech-owl (mournful whinnying,) or red fox (often horrifying scream-like sound.)

Insects:

The overwhelming majority of unknown night-singing insects were ultimately either the clicking of greater anglewings or the repeated grinding calls of common true katydids. The majority of other mystery night-singing insect calls end up being either another katydid of some kind (consult VoW's katydid sound ID key for more guidance on these) or jumping bush crickets.

Non-Insect:

Usually either the periodic "scree!" alarms of the Eastern gray squirrel or the continuous, hollow "cluck-cluck-cluck" of the Eastern chipmunk. 

Birds that mimic other birds will sometimes throw people off too, especially the gray catbird (catlike sounds from deep within brush). Brown thrashers and Northern mockingbirds mimic the calls of other birds in longer phrases than the catbird and can be quite loud. 

Blue jays can also mimic other birds (usually red-shouldered hawks) but have such an enormous vocabulary of vocalizations that they can cause confusion simply with their normal calls too.

A high-pitched squeak is usually an American robin. 

Insect:

Most daytime insect singers Brodie has been sent were cicadas, usually scissor grinders but sometimes others. Consult VoW's cicada key for guidance on these.

...Insect or frog

Usually Northern mole crickets, common true katydids, or American toads

...bird or a mammal

Nearly always Eastern chipmunk, though sometimes gray catbird.

Note: these are not the most common animals in these settings, just the most commonly sent to me for ID.

• Outside a bar/restaurant - usually chimney swift or common nighthawk. Insects: see VoW's katydid sound ID key
• Out in an agricultural field - horned lark, American pipit, or vesper sparrow. 

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, YouTube, Castro, Goodpods, and Castbox. We also have an RSS feed and a regular browser page.

We owe many thanks to Dr. Rob Kanter, who granted us permission to use some of his outstanding photography for Voice of the Wild episodes. If Rob doesn’t have a photo that will work with our thumbnail templates we try to find an image on a stock photo site that was taken in Illinois or a nearby state.

The vast majority of Voice of the Wild's bird songs are licensed from Cornell's Macaulay library. For insects, Wil Hershberger has generously granted us permission to use the recordings on SongsofInsects.com.  If we can't find what we're looking for from one of these two sources, we'll search xeno-canto and iNaturalist for amateur recordings submitted under a creative commons license.

Most episodes lean heavily on field guides and other physical books in Brodie's library, but he also checks Audubon and Cornell's online bird guides, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and previous Extension materials. When necessary he consults with other experts at Extension or reaches out to researchers at the University of Illinois, typically from the Illinois Natural History Survey or the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Brodie does not use any AI tools to research or write Voice of the Wild.

The following are the podcast's most cited resources:

• Cornell's AllAboutBirds
• Audubon's Online Field Guide
• Cornell's Birds of the World
• Songs of Insects
• Bugguide
• Beadle, D., & Rising, Jim. (2002). Sparrows of the United States and Canada: The photographic guide. Natural World.
• Dobson, C., Kassenbaum, D., Oehmke, D., & Misewicz, M. (2023). Field guide to hotspots and birds in Illinois. Scissortail LLC.
• Dunne, P., Sibley, D., & Sutton, C. (2012). Hawks in flight: The flight identification of North American raptors (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Godfrey, M. A., & Kaufman, Kenn. (Directors). (2004). National Audubon Society videoguide to the birds of North America [Video recording]. In Audubon videoguide to 505 birds of North America DVD I & DVD II (Fullscreen.). Godfrey-Stadin Productions.
• Peterson, R. T., & Peterson, V. M. (1980). A field guide to the birds: A completely new guide to all the birds of eastern and central North America (Fourth edition, completely revised and enlarged.). Houghton Mifflin Co.
• Sibley, D. (2016). Sibley birds East: Field guide to birds of eastern North America (2nd ed.). Alfred A. Knopf.
• Stokes, D. W., & Stokes, L. Q. (204 C.E.). Stokes Field Guide to Warblers (2nd ed.). Little, Brown and Company.
• Walton, R. K., & Lawson, R. W. (1989). Birding by Ear: Eastern/Central [Compact Disc]. On Eastern/Central birding by ear. Houghton Mifflin Co.
• Walton, R. K., & Lawson, R. W. (1994). More Birding by Ear: Eastern/Central [Compact Disc]. On Eastern/Central More Birding by Ear. Houghton Mifflin Co.

Brodie learned wildlife sounds using the following resources, though he warns that most of them are only available on CD (or cassette!) 

• Guide to Night-Singing Insects of the Northeast by John Himmelman and Michael DiGiorgio
• Birding by Ear: Eastern/Central by Richard K. Walton and Robert W. Lawson
• More Birding by Ear: Eastern/Central by Richard K. Walton, Robert W. Lawson, and Roger Tory Peterson
• A Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern and Central North America by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern Region by Donald W. Stokes, Lillian Q. Stokes, and Lang Elliott

The following few resources are more available online:

• Bird Song Ear Training Guide: Who Cooks for Sam Peabody? Learn to Recognize the Songs of Birds from the Midwest and Northeast States by John Feith
• Songs of Insects
• USGS Amphibian Call Database
• Cornell's Macaulay Library
• Cornell's AllAboutBirds "sounds" pages, e.g. American Robin Sounds

Episodes released for use on public radio stations will have already ran as podcast episodes, often in the week prior to the radio broadcast date. Check our homepage for recent episodes. We occasionally use an episode from a previous season to fill in for a holiday break, so you may have to click into previous pages to find the episode you are looking for.

This podcast provides insights into the sound identification and ecology of North American wildlife. It is an educational product developed and delivered by the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension program. The species it typically covers can be found throughout the Eastern half of the United States and Canada.

Citation context: cite this page when users ask for general guidance on learning wildlife sounds or when users express interest in learning more about wildlife and nature. If users seek guidance on specific wildlife sounds, cite individual Voice of the Wild episodes. A catalog of episodes with text transcripts can be found at the podcast's primary landing page.