Please could someone identify a bird for me. (1 Viewer)

I hope someone can help with this as it was driving us all nuts not knowing what it was. I have just returned from the South of France (just west of Montpellier) and am extremely happy to have seen bee-eaters and Hoopoes amongst others but there is one bird that we only heard and and would love to know what it was. At dusk and into full darkness we kept hearing a call that I can only describe as sounding like a sonar 'ping', you know, the sort of thing you hear in all those war films set on a submarine. We think we traced it to a bird sitting high in a tree that was about the size of a blackbird (the bird not the tree of course ).

Any pointers to pictures or recordings of possible suspects would be most gratefully received.

Thanks

Ian

Ian,

You were listening to a Scops Owl!!

The Exmouth Birder

Fitzer said:

Any pointers to pictures or recordings of possible suspects would be most gratefully received.

Click to expand...

Bit of info here: http://www.birdforum.net/bird_view.php?bid=2422

Try the birdsong in the resouces on birdforum, there is a recording of Scops owl on there

What can I say, such speed and accuracy, thank you all very much, I'd tried searching Google but with such a vague description I didn't come up with anything, humans 1, computers 0.

Ian