The Pong Bird
Riverdave's Journal
June 7, 2009
I love it when life presents a new mystery! In the
spring of 2007 I began to hear an unusual animal call in the evening,
coming from behind my cabin, on parkland that slopes down towards the
Eno River. At that time, I started referring to it as the “Pong Bird,”
as its vocalization seemed to have a ringing, bell like quality. After
a couple of weeks of hearing the call from my back porch, I asked my
wife to come out and confirm that it wasn’t just my imagination. She
heard it too. That was a relief, as confirmation in the realms of
mystery is very important!
Finally my curiosity got the best of me. One evening I
grabbed a flashlight and headed into the woods at dusk in the direction
of the call. Fearful that leaves crunching under my feet might
frighten the creature, I walked slowly. The calling animal moved ahead
of me downhill and eventually ended up next to the river, perhaps forty
or fifty feet up in the tree canopy. By then it was dark. I aimed my
flashlight upward and carefully searched through limbs and foliage but
spotted nothing.
The moment I turned off my flashlight the critter called
again, this time from the opposite bank of the river. Then it
proceeded to make its way up the opposite hill and I heard its call
disappear over the distant south ridge. I returned from my escapade
covered with scratches and spider webs from navigating the forest
off-trail at night. At least I had confirmed that the animal was
probably a bird, as It had crossed the Eno River without a splash.
As summer 2007 came upon us, it became apparent that the
Pong Bird’s favorite time to call was around four o’clock in the
morning on moonlit nights. When all else was quiet outside, I could
hear its call with more clarity and i realized that it had a
descending, two note vocalization, and was not as bell-like as I had
originally thought. One predawn morning I heard it on the street side
of our house for the first time and then it began to slowly move up our
street. I woke my wife and we raced out with a miniature tape recorder
and followed it up the street a ways to where it promptly reentered Eno
Parkland.
Once again, I stood directly underneath it but could not
spot it with a flashlight. Its call echoed in the forest to such a
degree that I was beginning to think that this ventriloquist animal
might even be somewhere on the ground, but this time I was holding a
recorder! Then I heard what sounded like a swoosh of wings above me as
something headed off down the hill deeper into the night forest.
My wife and I returned home excitedly and carefully
listened to our new recording. We decided to send it to a birding
friend, Jeff Pippen, who is a researcher at the Nicholas School of the
Environemnt and who maintains a popular nature website. He posted our
recording on his website and invited the public to comment.
We received a couple of dozen responses from folks all
over the United States. Fox, deer and immature owls were the most
frequently offered suggestions. Just when I was resigned to agree to
the theory of an aberrant call of some immature owl species, I sent the
recording to a regional owl specialist at UNC-Charlotte. He claimed
that the Pong Bird’s call did not sound like anything he had ever heard
in his long career of Piedmont avian research.
As cold weather came on in the fall, the Pong Bird ceased
to call - or perhaps gisappeared. The mystery was still unsolved.
But in May of 2008 it was back! This time I was determined to rally a
team of sharp birders to stake it out with strong spot lights and
finally get this mystery animal identified. But before I could
organize, I realized that the creature was not calling any more. By
summer it continued its silence, so I gave up hope for the season,
perhaps forever. I had let the “big one” get away.
One day in late fall of 2008, a friend who lives just a
couple of miles away tipped me off that she just saw a peacock wander
into her yard. She mentioned that in North Durham there are several
farms that raise exotic birds. I felt that this was one last direction
of Pong Bird inquiry that I needed to follow - the possibility of an
escaped exotic bird.
But a dozen phone calls later I had hit a brick wall, as
none of the North Durham farm exotics seemed to match the call of the
Pong Bird. I gave up my quest towards the end of 2008 after only
hearing the Pong Bird several times that year way back in May. Perhaps
the prodigal bird had found its way back home - wherever that might
be! A tropical migrant? My tantalizing mystery was proving to be very
evasive ...
But I’m now happy to report that as of Spring 2009, the
Pong is back yet again! It began calling from the exact same location
where I first heard it two years before - just down the hill from our
house in the direction of the Eno River. I recently played my previous
year’s recording to a friend who lives in a neighborhood upstream by
the Eno River several miles away. He claims that he has heard it on
occasion near his house as well.
So, my fellow citizens of Durham, I invite you to help
solve the mystery of the Eno Pong Bird! Has anyone else out there
heard it or have any new hypothesis or avenue of inquiry to follow? My
Pong Bird recording can be found on Jeff Pippen’s Nature Page with the
following link: www.duke.edu/~jspippen On jeff’s bird page, note the
heading “Mysteries ...” and then click on the highlighted ”“mystery
night vocalization.” Have fun with this one!
