u/CarpenterCritical715

[EDIT] Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?

I think this bird I am hearing is just a regular screech owl, or maybe an owl and a woodpecker that I am confusing to be one and the same animal.

It is hard to hear because it waits for heavy wind before it makes a funny sound like a loud frog or a kazoo maybe. Other times there is a loud sound like logs or branches hitting together right before the kazoo sound. These sounds always happen during the middle of wind gusts or at the tail end of the wind subsiding, much like a walking stick insect or a chameleon looks like wind blowing vegetation around when they walk, but with the sound of branches moving in the wind masking their calls instead of their movements.

Merlin Bird ID can't identify it, maybe because it can't hear it through the wind sounds.

I thought it was a screech owl for a few years, but now I think it is something else because I only ever see or hear barred owls around here.

This animal calls throughout the year, including winter, sometimes calls all day, and other times is strangely absent for weeks.

It also likes to wait for me to leave before it calls, which I have figured out by leaving my phone outside while recording and then collecting it later.

I have also seen red-headed woodpeckers and heard woodpeckers that I can't identify nearby.

My dumb ass wouldn't know what species it was if it landed on me, so I need help.

Oh I also heard it in wetlands a few miles from my house. Same behavior. I think I saw it as well, but I couldn't tell you what kind of bird it was that I saw or if it was actually the one calling. Not bigger than a crow, kind of darker colored but not black. That bird I saw followed me around and it kept making small and huge branches fall near me when it would settle in a tree above me, and I thought for a little while that it was deliberately trying to kill me. Before that, I thought someone was in the woods with me throwing sticks.

Do you come here to shoot down ideas as a skeptic, even mocking people, or do you believe in magic, monsters, and fun? Are you somewhere in the middle? If you are a believer, do you balance imagination with science? If you are a skeptic, do you balance science with a little bit of indulging flights of fancy or entertaining seemingly improbable organisms that defy our current understanding of the world? If I was in a monster club of nerdy believers, would you be a heckler that just sits in the corner laughing at me the whole time until I question why you are even allowed in the building? If you are a believer, how do you justify your theories in the face of naysayers?

In short, why are you here? What do you actually believe? If a kid you are responsible for asks you to check under the bed for monsters, do you laugh at them and not check? Do you check for them? Do you check with a false bravado, but secretly you are actually peeing your pants?

Consider this a survey, or a shibboleth.

Okay so I love this song, you know the one, and I remember asking my Mom about what the "ardor of arboreality" line meant. She said that it was talking about our ancestors descending from trees and giving up that lifestyle. From then on, I interpreted the other line about "throwing bones" to be about 2001: A Space Odyssey, which fits with what my Mom said and with their references to a monolith in "The Statue Got Me High" (meaning they have a "thing" with that movie).

So I saw this closeup from The Garden of Earthly Delights (picture not working, try to find it like Waldo I guess) a few years ago and thought that this was the egg in question.

(EDIT) it depicts what looks like a mob of naked people trying to crawl inside of a giant egg that is cracked open. Makes one think of "returning to the womb"... perhaps?

Then I heard another certain song that references the audience looking like "a scene from Heironymus" and thought that it might indicate that they have a "thing" with this painting.

Then I found an old interview that said this song was from before TMBG and that Flansburgh had worked hard on the parts of the lyrics that had something cryptic to do with (EDIT) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Is this really a thing, or just my headcanon?

Oh and I gave up trying to solve the riddle as a teen because the "yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned" stumped me and made me think it was gibberish for twenty-something years, not realizing there was a method to that apparent madness. The new leaf being caves and walking upright?

Someone throw me a bone.