These recordings were obtained by me in the primary research area of David Petti in the mountains of beautiful Colorado.

Monday the 3rd of August 2009 I camped in the mountains of Colorado. This is a very remote research site. Texas BFRO Investigator Sybilla Irwin and two companions (including David Petti) had camped here in mid-July. Sybilla had recorded some unusual vocals and encouraged me to check out the area. Her recordings and report can be found at Colorado Howl – Pt. 1. Also in the report be sure to read about the sound analysis done on these recordings by DB Donlon, The Blogsquatcher.

I arrived at about 5 p.m. and surveyed where I would place my two recorders. I was very fortunate to get these recordings because my one batteries only lasted 8 1/2 hrs and these recording were made at 7 hrs and 7 1/2 hrs into the night at 3 and 3:30 a.m.

I placed the Samson H-2 on a small rocky knoll behind the campsite and I placed the microphone for the Marantz 670 on my outside car mirror.

When the first vocal started off it woke me up . I listened for about 10 seconds and fell back to sleep. I could have placed the recorder further out but then if something was at my car I wouldn’t have been able to record it.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Colorado Howl 1

Waveform View

Spectral View

First vocalization was at 3 a.m. I woke up and listened for a few moments. It appeared to be about a 1/4 of a mile away.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Colorado Howl 2

Waveform View

Spectral View

The second recording a half hour later appears to be further away, was a 3:30 a.m. This sound was far enough in the distance that I did not wake up.

The third recording was of a coyote that was only about 150 feet from my car.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Coyote Vocalization was at 5 a.m. and only the H-2 had battery life left.

from DB Donlon:

I’ve listened to your clearest recording at the same location. That creature does seem to be more canine in it’s tone and certainly in it’s bark-like vocalizations, but it shows the same oddness with the non-harmonic frequency peaks.

I also tested the coyote that you recorded. One thing I note is that with the coyote, there is no non-harmonic frequency peak. I also note that as the calls go on, the coyote’s frequencies stay stable in relation to each other, while there is movement in the frequency peaks with the suspect call. I’m not an expert, but this would lead me to believe that the suspect call is not a coyote.

Here are some pictures — note that picture #5 (the 2nd here) is at a resolution of 22kHz so that you can see the regular arrangement of the coyote call easier, while picture #6 is rendered at 5kHz to match the pictures I sent to you earlier. Pic #4 is at 5kHz too. For picture #7 I went back and rendered at 22kHz to match the first pic of the coyote call. They do look similar until you start moving the cursor, then you see that the coyote call stays pretty stable, while the suspect call goes all over the place, with frequency peaks disappearing and appearing here and there. It’s odd.

Another quick follow up — note that in the coyote call, the fundamental is the highest peak. This is what I’ve been led to expect by my reading. But in our suspect calls, the dominant note moves around and is never the fundamental. I think this has to be a key characteristic so it’s worth remembering and studying some more.

Anyway, the pics:

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

The follwing recordings and report submitted by Texas BFRO Investigator Sybilla Irwin

Colorado Recordings by Texas BFRO Investigator Sybilla Irwin: July, 2009

Dave Petti, BFRO Colorado, invited me and another Colorado BFRO investigator  to visit his primary research area this summer. We arrived in the research area at 2:30 PM and spent the afternoon setting up our camp, gathering firewood and exploring the area east of our camp. We were acting like regular campers, we did not do anything unusual to provoke or arouse interest.

I began recording at 8:00 PM. We lit our campfire forty five minutes later, just before dark, and were enjoying the beautiful silence of this remote location when abruptly the first vocalization began.

First Vocalization occurred at 9:50 PM Tuesday. An unknown animal vocalized 8 times from an approximate distance of 1/3 a mile west of base camp. All remained quiet for the minutes immediately after these vocals.

Second vocalization occurred ten minutes later at 10:00 PM from a location of approximately 150 to 200 yards south of our camp, across a meadow. A lone coyote began the vocals and was answered by the unknown animal, which had apparently moved within ¼ mile of our camp location. The coyote and the unknown continued to vocalize back and forth to each other as the coyote crossed the meadow moving west.  The participants seemingly met, and then everything went silent.

Dave Petti arrived in the research area Thursday at 6:30PM and experienced these morning vocalizations.

Third Vocalization occurred at 8:45 AM Friday. Unknown animal begins vocals then is answered by coyotes. It is the same vocal pattern experienced at night. Unfortunately a jet airplane interrupts this recording.

Fourth Vocalization occurred at 5:55 AM Saturday. Unknown animal begins vocals, there is a pause, a second unknown vocalization then the coyotes join in. Identical vocal patterns experienced on all recordings.

from Stan Courtney

I was recently on the 2009 Colorado BFRO Expedition with Sybilla Irwin. She was excited about some sounds she had recently recorded and wanted my opinion. When I listened to them I was immediately struck by the fact that they reminded me of the Illinois Howl in the fact that the harmonics seemed strange. When I returned home I sent the sound clips to DB Donlon, The Blogsquatcher and asked him to do a sound analysis.

I just checked the file with no coyotes in it. It does exhibit the feature that I find interesting in suspected sasquatch calls. Note that I don’t know that this isn’t something coyotes do, but it is odd that we don’t get recordings of coyotes clearly doing this when we know that they are coyotes. I’ll attach some pictures and if you look at the third window, with the frequency spikes, you’ll see that at the beginnings of the calls there’s an extra frequency in the call that is not related to the fundamental.

I know that coyotes and wolves can make a sound very like this, but in those cases, the extra frequencies are produced at a fraction of the fundamental (1/2 the value of the fundamental, I’m pretty sure.) So this is something different from that and so far I’ve not run across anyone who talks about this non-harmonic frequency spike in canine calls.

So to the pics:

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3