What Am I Hearing in the Redwood Forest? (Redding, Santa Cruz: neighborhood, campground)

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what I've been hearing in the Jedediah Smith redwood forest recently while walking there with my dog.

I thought it might be an elk, but I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos of elk sounds, and I don't think it's an elk.

It sounds like a high pitched whistle, but as if it has an electrical feedback noise in it, too. It's pretty loud for it to be a bird, but I don't know. But, this is why I thought it might be an elk, because it sounds pretty loud for a bird to make. It sounds like one will make this sound on a hill above me, then it sounds like there's an answer down the other side of the hill.

The time of day is usually late afternoon.

Would appreciate any ideas.

I was so excited today to find a banana slug!!! The only other time in my life I saw a banana slug in the wild, was in WA on the Olympic peninsula in the rain forest. Almost stepped on him, but fortunately missed. I had to take a double take. I thought they would be much farther north. Very, very cool little creatures.

[jbunniii]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

I was so excited today to find a banana slug!!! The only other time in my life I saw a banana slug in the wild, was in WA on the Olympic peninsula in the rain forest. Almost stepped on him, but fortunately missed. I had to take a double take. I thought they would be much farther north. Very, very cool little creatures.

You can also find them much further south, for example in the wet parts of the Santa Cruz mountains. There's a reason UC Santa Cruz has a banana slug mascot. They're cute and cuddly, but don't pick them up - the salt on our fingers can harm them. There's an annual banana slug festival in Guerneville (Russian River, Sonoma County), where you can watch them race, or eat them, depending on your preference.

[Hawk J]

Blue Jays, at times, make a whistle sound.

[Roaddog]

I don't know what you are hearing but I love those forests, I visit once a year and plan on retiring in that area.

[chuckmann]

Well, if there is no man around, are you still nagging?

I have always enjoyed the sounds of nature as I walked in total isolation. I have never questioned. I just accept. .Apparently you and I have a different approach to our encounters with nature. Nothing wrong with that. Different strokes and all

[JGC97]

Maybe Bigfoot?

[chuckmann]

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

Maybe Bigfoot?

Oh man I cant describe my bigfoot paranoia in maybe 1977 1977 driving from Redding to Crescent City neighborhood 1977

I used to sleep in my car. The billboard said something about bigfoot. I did not sleep a wink that night.

[hpygirl40]

My husband and I spend a lot of time in Humboldt County, and we camp at Albee Creek campground in Humboldt Redwoods State Park every year. We hike every day the week that we stay, and have heard those noises to. Sometimes the Redwood trees cross each other because of the way they grow or because a tree has become partially uprooted and is leaning on another tree. I believe this noise to be the trees rubbing against each other.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

Maybe Bigfoot?

This is what I was thinking. They're signaling to each other.

[Ruth4Truth]

This thread is reminding me of a book I read by a physicist who was also a surfer, and won the Nobel Prize for physics one year. The newspaper headlines that morning said, "Surfer Wins Nobel Prize For Physics!" This guy had land up in Mendocino, around the redwoods. In a book he wrote about his adventures in life and general ramblings (kind of a stream-of-consciousness approach), he talks about a very strange encounter he had with what appeared to him in that moment to be a racoon, in his neck of the forest. Somehow, he ended up waking up the next day in the middle of a clearing, having apparently spent the night sleeping on the ground (as far as he could tell). It freaked him out. About a year later, he saw a book in the bookstore with a picture of his "raccoon" on the cover; it was a book about alien abductions.

I'm not an alien abduction conspiracy person, I'm just recounting what this guy wrote in his book. There could be strange things in redwood forests, who knows? Check out "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field", if you can find it on Amazon. It's a good read. Except for the chapter where the author rants about the global AIDS conspiracy. Strange guy. The field of physics seems to collect some unusual personalities.