Wild Photos! cougars acting like a pride of lions

Can I be the first to say ….duh??

I think? it’s obvious she is feeding them, they didn’t drag the cow down in front of the camera.
Lots of cats though, wow.
REPLY: As I understand it the cow was killed, they noted it and put out the cam, this is the second night when the cats came back for the spoils. Even eight cats couldn’t drag away a cow, even if they cooperated. – A

A neighbor of mine in Golden, Colorado caught a photo of 5 mountain lions all laying down on a rocky slope at different heights in his back yard. It was scene that might have been filmed in Africa.

“Here kitty kitty”
O.T. comment, apologise:
I think Steven H. say that to NASA, blasting “messages” to aliens.
We are in a jungle (Galaxy) and scream: “Here kitty kitty …”

[snip – off color, Anthony]

Is this pride behavior “unprecedented”? Is there proof that in the past cougars never formed prides?
A few yrears back when the Lorenz paradigm was rejected in biology, and biologists went back and rechecked their field notes they were surprised to discover a whole bunch of self censorship of OBVIOUS behavioral facts they had overlooked inorder to match the current meme of non aggression.

Obviously, this would never happen without the pernicious inflewence of AAAGGGWW.
(They used to eat granola.)

National Geographic had a special on recently about the first confirmed coyote kill of an adult human….in Atlantic Canada recently
The mother of the daughter killed was like “I just want to protect wildlife.”
Yet the proliferation of coyotes and their lack of fear of homo sapiens may have contributed to her daughter’s death (and her daughter was an artist….a nationally recognized folksinger who was just taking a hike in a national park.
Insanity…on behalf of her mom.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

That is a beautiful sight. Not real comforting for a jogger or bicycle rider, but sitting here in my freezing Seattle winter wonderland, beautiful. Unless you’ve seen a full grown and healthy cougar in their world you cannot imagine the majesty and terror at once that you sense when in the presence these animals. Here in Washington I don’t fear bears but I do fear and respect cougars. They are very quiet when they’re working.

Something similar seems to be happening with coyotes.
Growing up in Saskatchewan, I was somewhat familiar with the behavior of coyotes. Until I was in my early twenties, I had seen coyotes in the wild only once. They were smart and shy of humans.
More recently, I have heard stories of coyotes in Ontario. They seem pretty brazen and come right into farm yards. They don’t act at all like the ones out west who give human habitation a wide berth. (They’re still plenty smart though.) I have also heard that they are inter-breeding with wolves.
Critters are smarter than we give them credit for and will adapt to a changing environment.

Ah. When I read “cougar”, I assumed you meant the Human variety.

In 2007 it was speculated:
“Climate change could be causing cougar attacks: expert“

Nik says:
February 23, 2011 at 10:43 pm
I agree with Nik. Rather like the recent “discovery” of tigers living above a particular altitude, was it in Brunei? can’t recall right now, but it was “thought/believed” impossible until actually photographed live! (As said before, no body apologised or owned up to being wrong about it). I know folk lore is a powerful thing, just like tales of wolves hunting & killing humans, as I understand it they would only ever do that when really hungry, not as a norm. Is this a scientific self-censorship type of thing where arrogance & presumption takes precedence? Anyway, the photos are stunning & magnificent, these creatures are truly beautiful. We in the PDREU/EUSR have nothing like it, but I would raise the question about conservation in general regarding our declining [sparrow] population & the protection of Sparrow-Hawks……………….”How many sparrows does it take to feed a breeding Sparrow-hawk population?” Over here the poor old farmer gets falsely accused for all those pesticides he sprays indiscriminately (allegedly). The RSPB et al can’t wait to jump on modern farming methods, you know the ones that keep us all fed, whilst the organic farmers can farm at will because it is fashionable. Note I used the word “methods” as opposed to the word “practices”, as used by the anti-moderns, why do they love to use words that can make something sound dirty &/or unsavoury?

There are too many coyotes in South Colorado. They try to steal chickens from our neighbors, and they killed off a dozen or so half-wild cats that lived around our house and protected us from the field mice.
My son shot one of the coyotes but they rarely show up in the daytime. Usually they come at night, making a lot of noise far away but then sneaking silently very close, right to the front door — and you know about it only because dogs suddenly start barking and nervously running around.
There is a mountain lion nearby, too. She lives down the creek but keeps away from people and houses. Good strategy, because if it ever comes near, I am not going to apply for license before I shoot it. I am afraid of cougars and bears roaming around. They are smart and ruthless predators, and they will eat you if they can.

Pamela Gray says:
February 23, 2011 at 11:24 pm
“My older sister insists that I “carry” when I go fishing. She’s probably right.”
No “probably” about it.
“But look, there is only so much a belt can carry.”
Try a shoulder holster.
“If it comes down to the worms or the .357, the worms will win.”
A .357 is a heavy weapon and unless you want to stop a charging bear it’s overkill. It’s too large for small hands too. A lightweight wheel gun I like is a 5-shot .38 Smith & Wesson “Chief’s Special”. Standard model weighs 19 ounces and the airweight model weighs 15.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=202935414#PIC
It can be safely used with “+P” (high pressure) ammunition for irregular use and standard rounds for frequent use (self-defense vs. target practice). The +P rounds pack almost as much punch as a standard .357 round. The difference is .357 revolvers can handle a lot hotter load than a standard .357 and do it all day long at the practice range. The reason they can do that is they have about twice the amount of steel in their construction and feel like you’re carrying a brick after a short time.
Are cougars attracted to anise/peanutbutter/krill scent?

It’s worse than we thought. (there, it is said, now we can move on)

@ Alex Feht
You are absolutely incorrect when you state coyotes and wolves cannot interbreed. You would also be incorrect if you assumed the same thing about dogs and coyotes as well. For your reading pleasure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coydog
Now, I’ve never seen a Coywolf, but I’ve definitely seen a Coydog. Used to have one running around in the woods behind my house in Indiana.
One interesting thing about Coyotes, and I suspect that it’s probably the same with cougars, they are naturally solitary animals until small game (rabbits, squirrels, foxes, raccoons, cats, etc…) are in short supply. Then their survival instinct takes over and they pack together. The best indication that coyotes are over-populated is when you start coming along deer kill sites where the carcass has been picked clean in a short amount of time.

What a sight! Been around cougars off and on since my early twenties and stilll intrigued by them. They are funny about dogs, sometimes one beagle can run them up a tree and other times they will kill and eat a big dog. Down in central california there is a guy named Jeff Davis who used to be and might still be a government cat man, he has many amazing pictures and could tell you much about cat behavior if you can get him to talk. His wife says she thinks he would eat a lion turd if it would make him a better tracker!

That handgun will do you a lot of good when it leaps from a tree and rips your neck out.
I’m glad however, that we live in a world where wild creatures still exist. Wilderness is much more real when the presence of cougars reminds you that humans aren’t always in control. Hmmm sort of like climate……

Just a few comments.
1. An averaged sized cow will produce around 500- 600 pounds of hamburger. That would feed many people today.
2.Just the cow at todays prices of $.60 a pound live weight is worth $720 for a 1200 pound cow.
3. Where is her calf?
4. The question. Do we want life destroying,food destroying ,people killing animals around or not? I vote for fewer cougars

Correction: It seems both the Sheriff and I have been snookered
It’s fortunate you have a network that can catch these things. Most people don’t have that when they are in error. And being in error happens more often than we want to admit.

My brother is a member of community watch of a small satellite town near Ottawa, Canada. A few years ago they had to hire a trapper to rid them of a pack of coyotes that were preying on family pets. The final straw was a leashed lap dog that was attacked while being walked… one coyote faced down the owner while others dragged the pet away. A bloody collar was all that was found.
The trapping was successful but no one walks their animals alone any more.

Who’d ever heard of eight cougars at a kill site?
Well… There is this bar just down the street….

I was going to make a tasteless joke about older women going after young men but thought better about it and decided instead to go hunting. Anybody seen any older women on the prowl lately?

“The Beast in The Garden” by David Baron is an excellent book about cougars repopulating suburban areas. It reads like crime novel.

Nice photos, but I don’t think this is unusual or puzzling at all. If this was the second night the carcass was out, they all knew where the food was and probably waited very close to claim the carcass. I don’t think these photos support pack activity at all, but they certainly indicate the size of the local population.
According to cougarfund.org, 2-3 cougar cubs are raised for 18-24 months and the mothers are pregnant or raising their cubs 76% of their lives. As noted in the story, we might only be looking at two related mothers and their current/recent offspring trying to pick up a free meal. Not surprising that a closely related family might all be sharing the meal and tolerant of each other’s presence.
Notice the time stamp of 4:50 p.m. Sunset at 4:01 means they got there fast or were already waiting nearby. In a period of 24-36 hours, I would bet that at LEAST two mothers/cubs could find a tasty carcass within a their hunting ranges.

Not what I was hoping for with a headline of about wild photos and Cougars.

Slightly OT but still on the subject of animal behaviour. I life in what has been called the Raccoon Capital of the World – ie Toronto. Raccoons are apparently evolving to thwart every obstacle we try to put between them and garbage, assisted by their opposable thumbs. The link here is from the Toronto Star (apologies to those familiar with the objectionable nature of this paper):
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/936548–documentary-reveals-the-secret-lives-of-toronto-s-raccoons
The documentary airs tonight.

Incidently, I seen reports by wildlife biologists to the effect that Cougars control their breeding to match the available food supplies. So if you put food out for animals you get more animals.
They also say, that as a result of that behavior, in order to make a dent in cougar numbers, you would have to in one season kill 1/3 of all the animals in a particular rane; so a little “culling” simply doesn’t work
Just stay out of their environment and you won’t have any problems; you can always go to the gym and do your nature walks on a treadmill just like guinea pigs do. And if you put a little rat dog in your purse and go to a bar with it, pretty soon we will have cougars, and coyotes in the bars too.

I do not think they are travelling in a pack just the smell of blood will draw them in for miles around. Notice in the pictures that most of them are standing back waiting thier turn on the kill, and one swatting at the other to get at the kill. Cougars are a killer but will scavenge at an opurtunity, when one is hungry anything will do.

Methinks some skullduggery is at foot! Seems strange that the “pride” appears focused away from the “kill” (we mostly see backs) I could be wrong, but I wonder if these are not a series of photos shot at the local zoo and several layers photoshopped together??? I would certainly like to see a photo of the scene showing placement of the game camera in relation to the kill, etc. Looks a bit like the dead walrus pics of a few months back! — i.e. “out of context”
I’ve hunted puma (mostly with a camera) for much of my six decades, and finding even two identifiable cat footprints in the same area in the wild is extremely rare! Even mated pairs seldom occupy the same hunting area!
I blame George Bush!

I know nothing of the mating habits of cougars, but, rather than a hunting pride, could this just be a gathering of males around a female in heat who downed the cow?
I have seen around 10 domestic toms clustered together around a female, “waiting their turn”, as it were.

Alexander already commented on his previous post as to inbreeding between wolves and coyotes, but since I had already searched for the article below-here is is. Appears the coyotes migrating into the New England area took a Canadian route resulting in wolve interactions and became larger than their southwestern USA forebearers. While the article speaks of the current Ohio coyote immigrants as being still smaller, we have seen both versions here in SE Ohio over the last 2-3 years.
Incidentally, for Joe, there are substantiated reports of a breeding pair of cougars in the Muskingham area of Ohio since 2008.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/17/for_coyotes_at_least_study_finds_new_englanders_a_special_breed/

Phil. says:
February 24, 2011 at 8:37 am
“Coyotes do interbreed with wolves and dogs, genetic evidence indicates that eastern coyotes have some wolf genes.”
Correct. But that reflects the fact that coyotes are not a native species of the east but only spread there recently. The key point is that wolves and dogs are the same species, different subspecies. So when you say “The wolf, dingo, dog, coyote, and golden jackal diverged relatively recently, around three to four million years ago” you are confusing things. Fossil evidence of domestic dogs is much more recent – 15,000 BP – but DNA evidence suggests domestication much earlier. Moreover, people kept domesticating wolves throughout history; the ‘dogs’ of the historic plains peoples were wolf-dogs.
The so-called ‘Red Wolf’ of the eastern U.S. is another very mixed up story.
The leading researcher on this is Robert K. Wayne and two key papers you can find via google are ‘Molecular evolution of the dog family’ and ‘Multiple and Ancient Origins of the Domestic Dog’ (I have them on paper so, sorry, no links handy).
Alexander Feht says:
February 24, 2011 at 12:51 pm
“Still, I believe it has been shown by genetic analysis that domesticated dogs are descendants of the Middle Eastern subspecies of wolves, not of the jackals?”
Right you are Alexander, except that there were multiple and ongoing domestications,
not just in the ME. The earliest dogs which can be distinguished by fossils actually come from China. Before agriculture created needs for specialized dogs, the best dog was just a wolf so those earlier dogs had no obvious physical differences.
Anyhow, please check out those two papers I noted and it will all make sense.

I think it is ‘viscous’ Tea Baggers trying to kill off itinerant populations.

Al Gored
February 24, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Good stuff! Robert Waynes papers are a must read. I am trying to find links to them, and one by the insufferable David Mesh.
I disagree with the non-nativity of the coyote in the east. They probably ranged there before the grey wolf displaced them when the came to this continent. C.latrans is a lot older then C.lupus. Xiaoming Wang has a great paper on North American canine evolution. I have a pdf, but can’t seem to find a link.
Of the four ssp. of lupus thought to be the origin of the dog, two are now in a bit of a mess. The Indian sub-populations of C.l.pallipes and chanco might constitute a species separate from C.lupus. This sort of makes sence.

Nice story. It is interesting to read posts from enthusiasts and observers of US carnivores. It does seem as though, as a PP pointed out, there is a lot more to learn about them. I take it that means the science is not settled? These biologists really need to lift their game – climate science was settled in a couple of decades, and this lot have been fiddle-arsing around for hundreds of years now. 🙂
Anyway, interesting as they are in the abstract, carnivores are not my preferred neighbours. The well meaning re-introduction and protection of these around the world is starting to cause problems, such as urban foxes in the UK attacking pets and even people (small ones like children and babies being preferred). We have similar problems developing in northern Australia, with (protected) crocodiles getting bigger, bolder and more numerous. Shooting the odd ‘rogue’ does not begin to deal with the problem that is brewing there – a 14 year old kid was lost swimming in a waterhole only last week. I mean completely lost, as in no part of him has been found, or is expected to be.
Medium to large carnivores are fantastic in animal parks and on TV. People who have to live close to them tend to have a different perspective.

In his post Alexander Feht said:
February 24, 2011 at 2:50 am
P.S. to commieBob: Coyotes cannot interbreed with wolves. Coyotes and wolves have different number of chromosome pairs.
======================
Then I guess this quote from Wikipedia on coyote-Wolf hybrids is in error?
“The wolf, dingo, dog, coyote, and golden jackal diverged relatively recently, around three to four million years ago, and all have 78 chromosomes arranged in 39 pairs. This allows them to hybridize freely (barring size or behavioral constraints) and produce fertile offspring. The side-striped jackal and black-backed jackal both have 74 chromosomes. Other members of the Canidae family, which diverged seven to ten million years ago, are less closely related to and cannot hybridize with the wolf-like canids; the red fox has 38 chromosomes, the raccoon dog has 42 chromosomes, the fennec fox has 64 chromosomes, and the African wild dog has 78 chromosomes.” See the entry at Canid Hybrids.

DesertYote says:
February 24, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Al Gored
February 24, 2011 at 2:32 pm
“Good stuff! Robert Waynes papers are a must read. I am trying to find links to them, and one by the insufferable David Mesh.”
I’m sure you can google them but Phil has just provided a handy link to one of them.
I think you must mean David Mech. He has had a long career. What do you find “insufferable” about him? He did some outstanding work but I have some real problems with some of his recent pronouncements, now that wolf conservation has become so rabidly politicized.
“I disagree with the non-nativity of the coyote in the east. They probably ranged there before the grey wolf displaced them when the came to this continent.”
That’s a good point. Since they were here far longer. I wasn’t thinking that far back. Maybe they were a more forest adapted species that long ago? But based on the historical record and the habitat it is clear they were not present in the east during any recent period.
And what really confuses things is ‘dogs’ which virtually all people had. I’m convinced that is what makes the red wolf so confusing. When early smallpox (ca. 1550-1600)wiped out millions of Native North Americans, what became of their dogs?
I have many, many questions about the supposed subspecies of wolves in North America, for many reasons. (And everything that was ever classified by Merriam. You know about him?) And now they are trying to invent utterly absurd ones, like the alleged ‘rain forest’ subspecies on the BC coast, for purely political purposes. Requires a high level of denial or ignorance about both history and wolf behavior to suggest that.
Anyhow, glad you are as interested in these things as I am. The more you look into this stuff, the more interesting it becomes.
in the eastern US people is another mysteryC.latrans is a lot older then C.lupus. Xiaoming Wang has a great paper on North American canine evolution. I have a pdf, but can’t seem to find a link.
Of the four ssp. of lupus thought to be the origin of the dog, two are now in a bit of a mess. The Indian sub-populations of C.l.pallipes and chanco might constitute a species separate from C.lupus. This sort of makes sence.

DesertYote – Sorry, I forgot to delete some stuff at the bottom of my last post… it should end at “becomes.”

The pride gathering is fairly common behavior in the cats. At the zoo in Green Bay they have a whole cougar area and the cats get along fine with some handling.
We have a rapidly growing cougar population in WI, and especially in the northern forests where I live. The DNR is in denial, but I have seen 3 so far, including one near where I work on a whitewater river. That one was black, and I found it’s scat every morning most of the summer before actually seeing it. Apparently according to the experts, not only do we not have cougars here, melanism is out of the question. Three other locals have seen it too, including a hunting guide and the local cop.
Walking down to the river alone in dense wild country that I KNOW has a full sized 50+kg cougar that is regularly within a mile is not one of the favorite parts of my work. I always make a little noise, keep my eyes peeled sharp, including up, and wear non-natural colors like blue or red. If that doesn’t work out, there is always my little .32 auto with hot loads..
Cougars are a testament to evolution and quite possibly the ultimate predator. They can jump 20′ up and 40′ horizontal, and drag a full sized deer up into a tree. Their senses are amazingly keen. It is unlikely that you will see them coming in an attack.
Being quarry of a 50-75kg cougar is not beautiful or majestic, especially with the deer getting scarce. The settlers killed them off for a reason, and it took 100 years and a bounty. They are not easy to hunt. Seeing them in large numbers is not good.

Re: coyotes, jackals, wolves, and dogs.
There is a widespread confusion about what, exactly, is called “jackal.” One of four species of “jackal” (actually, a subspecies of the wolf) has the same amount of chromosomes as dogs, while three of the four species (true jackals) don’t. This confusion, and the fact that coyotes behave very much like jackals, led me to think that North American coyotes are akin to the true jackals that cannot interbreed with dogs.
The New World Encyclopedia gives this description of jackals (emphasis is mine):
“Jackal is the common name for Old World, coyote-like mammals in any of three species in the genus Canis of the family Canidae: Canis aureus (golden jackal), Canis adustus (side-striped jackal), and Canis mesomelas (black-backed jackal). These small to medium-sized canids, with long legs and curved canine teeth, are found in Africa, Asia, and southeastern Europe. The name jackal sometimes also is applied to a fourth canid species, Canis simensis, which may be known as the red jackal, Abyssinian wolf, red fox, or Ethiopian snub nosed raven. However, this species generally is considered closer to the wolf (also a member of the Canis genus) and is not considered in this article.”
Thus, true jackals don’t interbreed with wolves. Calling the Abyssinian wolf a “jackal” muddies the waters. (Russians are familiar only with the “Turkmen jackal,” which is a Central Asian variety of the Abyssinian wolf; there are reports that in the 1970s it was successfully crossed with dogs, including Siberian huskies.)

This has been an educational lesson to me. As a farmer I picked up of the fact the cow that died was an economic loss to society and the owner. I have seen in an earlier post there was not a cow involved after all. But all the following discussion centered on cougars,coyotes and how interesting wildlife is. I’ve learned that the posters here are so used to going to the store and simply getting what they need that the problems involved in delivering food to them are a very minor part of their lives.
Oh well . I guess farmvill is more real to people than real agriculture and that is scarry>

Wild nature!! And here is a photo of a pack of dogs attacking a crocodile!!!
http://colfaxchick.blogspot.com/2010/09/dog-pack-attacks-croc.html

*****
Al Gored says:
February 24, 2011 at 8:58 pm
No doubt that the Barred Owl has rapidly expanded its population and does compete with their cousins but not so simple to fix.
*****
Here in the Appalachian forests, there are (at least) two large birds that have defied human-caused changes and flourished — the Barred owl & the Pileated woodpecker. Both are very elusive to see, but are easily detected by their calls. Besides the usual who cooks for you? call, the BO also has a neck-hair-raising “bark” that sounds like something out of a horror movie.
Even Great Blue herons have returned — there’s one that commonly patrols & feeds out of my border stream, even in the winter. I’ve seen the smaller Green heron here in the summer. And I’m 200 miles from the Atlantic.

DesertYote says:
February 24, 2011 at 10:58 pm
“Speaking of native American dogs, ever hear of the Carolina Dog?”
Sure have. Are you familiar with the book ‘A History of Dogs in the Early Americas’ by Marion Schwarz (Yale University Press)?
And I see you definitely get the problem of inventing ‘subspecies’ or ‘distinct geographic populations.’ When they can, and can get it listed as Threatened or worse, some research team has a new franchise and jobs for years, decades, or for life. Plus use it as leverage for other land use agendas. Bit of a conflict of interest there to put it mildly. It is now so bad that the DNA evidence they use has also become… ah… dubious is a nice word.

otropogo says: February 25, 2011 at 11:11 am
[…]
If this documentation is genuine, it suggests to me that such an accumulation of juveniles have aggregated in the less desirable terrain avoided by the big toms that they have become something of an extended family, hunting together, as sibling juveniles do.
That would be a reasonable assumption. However, the four I saw, live in an area with a lot of deer, elk, wild turkeys, rabbits, mink, etc. There is a lot of wild food, which is probably why they haven’t gone after the horses and cows people keep around here. Lack of food does not seem to be the cause for their banding together.

Rational Debate says:
February 26, 2011 at 12:27 am
Screech owls don’t make sounds that would usually qualify for your ‘Hollywood’ soundtrack. They are too small, so not too impressive volume wise, and not all that wierd sounding. So I would bet what you are hearing are Barred Owls. Along with the usual ‘who-cooks-for-you’ and the call that ‘beng’ just described, they also do single hoots and a variety of other wierd calls including, mostly near their nesting trees, what I call ‘monkey chatter’ which kind of sounds like a crazed chimp, or two going back and forth.
Another possibility is a Long-eared Owl, which I’m sure you have around there but are extremely secretive and easy to never see. They also produce some very wierd calls.
But I still have extreme doubts about GHOs doing in those kittens. I didn’t bother to check what wiki says but the scenario you decribe with them eating heads is typically just when prey – like snowshoe hares or voles – is hyperabundant. And I doubt kittens are. And those heads were missing, not pecked open, and the rest of the body (meat) was just left? Hmmm.
But if you have tons of feral cats around, they are definitely competing with owls for food so maybe this is war! 😉
All those cats must be rather hard on the local small bird population too.
beng says:
February 26, 2011 at 6:56 am
Barred Owls call at all times of the day, more on cloudy days in daylight.
Having 5 in one area suggests a family group more than a mating season gathering – unless the population there is insanely high. The juveniles make a high pitched hissing call, which could be interpreted as a whistling call, which is a ‘begging’ and contact call directed to their parents. They keep this up for a few weeks max after leaving the nest. That could be what you heard.
Anyhow, if you want to know what kind of owls you have in your area, the simplest thing to do is spend time outside at night in early spring when they call the most (Feb-Apr depending on where you are) or, if you want to speed things up, get a tape of their calls and use that… many will respond to taped calls. But just don’t use tapes too much in the same place as it throws them off and wastes their energy.
And those tapes are great for learning the typical territorial owl calls too, though they rarely include the wierd ones we are discussing here.

*****
Al Gored says:
February 26, 2011 at 11:13 am
beng says:
February 26, 2011 at 6:56 am
Barred Owls call at all times of the day, more on cloudy days in daylight.
Having 5 in one area suggests a family group more than a mating season gathering – unless the population there is insanely high. The juveniles make a high pitched hissing call, which could be interpreted as a whistling call, which is a ‘begging’ and contact call directed to their parents. They keep this up for a few weeks max after leaving the nest. That could be what you heard.
*****
You’re right, it was a soft, distorted, rough “whistle” — hissing would be a better description. And your crazed “monkey chatter” description is better than mine, too. ACK!! ACK!!
When I was at that house, a Pileated woodpecker took a liking to chopping on the main bay-window frame at first morning light, eventually chopping it to shreds. The whole window had to be replaced. I guessed it was the “reflection” thing where the male sees a competitor in the window & attacks in agitation. Seen the same thing happen w/other birds. A Pileated is a dead-ringer for Woody woodpecker w/the same maniacal behavior. ha-Ha-HA-HA!-ha. hahahahahahaha.

I believe the 8 mountain lion photo is a faked. It appears pieced together. One lion appears in the exact same position and same pose in two pictures with the others moved around. One source says this is near Brady, Texas, one says Lake Oroville, Ca and one say Washington. Multiple locations seems to be a common tactic used in Internet fakes.