Can someone explain .................................

[Peri]

On TV programmes when anybody is in the countryside at night - you often hear a screaming sound in the background - like a short high pitched scream. It seems to be in Midsomer Murders a lot and I heard in on Love Soup the other week. Can anybody tell me is it supposed to be an owl or something similiar ?

[lepers]

is it not foxes barking?

[MsBadely]

It's a peacock.

[brionon]

It's a vixen. Beware if you hear it---Inspector Barnaby will turn up and then your neighbours will start to get murdered.

[claireybear]

I actually thought that sound was a crow! I was out by a church one night past 11 and I could here a very similar sound it really sounded like a woman screaming but I was informed by someone I was with that it was a crow!

[lepers]

aren't crows in bed by then? think if its a short "khaa" kinda sound its foxies or as brionon said a vixen to be sure

[Drusilla]

I think you've got two choices and both have been mentioned, but I think the one you're after is the vixen. The strangest noise I heard in the countryside was an old man's cough. I honestly thought I was being followed across a field by a pervert and ran home. The farmer's wife at my digs laughed and told me it was a sheep. I never realised sheep coughed so much.

[claireybear]

Oh I'm sorry, and peacocks stay up late do they???

Someone agree with me that is is crows!

[lepers]

lol they are a more sociable kinda bird, its all that plumage flashing! :o)

[Peri]

Thanks all for your answers - all I know is that the sound happens quite a lot in all these dramas - it seems to be the only countryside sound they have on tape.

[RogK]

Fox. Definitely.

[eccy]

lepers is right, it's foxes.

[Narolines]

You don't have to live in the country to hear vixens - there are loads of 'em round here, right in the middle of the West Midlands connurbation. Some years ago one had an earth under our garden hedge. Foxes wander about here even in broad daylight as though they owned the place.........

[Hermia]

Narolines - too right! Foxes sunbathe on our lawn and when I go out there they give me this look as if to say, "Yes? Do you want something?"!

[paul and sal]

its definately fox's peri, and they tend to be at their most vocal during the breeding season, (january / february)