Thank you to Paul. This is one for the birds. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1. Little character shown by husband in corporation occupying permanent residence (3,5)
TOM THUMB : [ H(abbrev. for “husband”) contained in(in) TUM(short for “tummy”/stomach/corporation) ] contained in(occupying) TOMB(in which one is buried and can be said to permanently reside in).
Defn: … in English folklore.
6. Main country for monster (6)
MEDUSA : MED(short for the Mediterranean Sea, an example of “main”/open ocean) + USA(abbrev. for the country, United States of America).
Defn: … in Greek mythology, in the shape of a human female with live snakes in place of hair.
9. Defective directive defended by agent (6)
FLAWED : LAW(a directive/a decree) contained in(defended by) FED(short for “Federal Agent” a member of FBI of the US).
10. Machine gun dude fed to a Scot surreptitiously (8)
STACCATO : CAT(like “dude”, slang for a guy/man) contained in(fed to) anagram of(… surreptitiously) A SCOT.
Defn: Like … fire, consisting of a series of short and distinct sounds in rapid succession.
11. Curious things I see with cat or cuckoo (9)
ESOTERICA : Anagram of(… cuckoo) [I SEE plus(with) CAT OR].
13. Home of fried chicken and pork pie for pop icon (5)
KYLIE : KY(abbrev. for the state of Kentucky, USA, the headquarters/home of the fast food chain “Kentucky Fried Chicken”) plus(and) LIE(“pork pie” in rhyming slang).
Answer: Minogue, pop icon from Australia.
15. Cricket side takes part of wicket out for a while? (2,4)
ON BAIL : ON(one side of a cricket field) plus(takes) BAIL(one of the 2 crosspieces bridging the stumps of a cricket wicket).
Defn: … awaiting trial in court, having posted bond.
17. Swift – doing what it does? (6)
FLYING : Double defn: 1st: …/travelling at fast speed; and 2nd: What “it”(the bird, swift) is perhaps/? doing.
18. Thief looking at gull from behind (6)
LOOTER : Reversal of(… from behind) [ RE(with reference to/at, as in, “she was good at lying”) + TOOL(a gull/a person who is fooled into being exploited).
19. Those from outskirts of 21 across on posh carriage (6)
LANDAU : [ L AND D ][1st and last letters of(Those from outskirts of) of “Libya”/solution to 21 across ] plus(on) U(letter signifying “posh”/upper class).
Defn: Horse-drawn four-wheeled enclosed ….
21. Country found coming through Mali by air (5)
LIBYA : Hidden in(found coming through) “Mali by air“.
22. Spooner’s admonishment to ankle-biting chickens, the tops! (4,5)
POLO NECKS : Spoonerism of “no low pecks!”(possibly, an admonishment to chickens to stop pecking/biting at one’s ankles).
Defn: Style of clothing for the upper body.
25. Bird sanctuary foreign to herons (3,5)
HEN ROOST : Anagram of(foreign) TO HERONS.
26. By the sound of it, albatross an albatross? (6)
BURDEN : Homophone of(By the sound of it) [ “bird”(of which “albatross” is an example) + “an” ].
28. Issue securing pile, able to click into place (4-2)
SNAP-ON : SON(issue/male offspring) containing(securing) NAP(pile/the raised hairs on the surface of a fabric).
29. Movement of turntable perhaps derailing train too (8)
ROTATION : Anagram of(derailing) TRAIN TOO.
Down
2. One bird or another dropping head (3)
OWL : “fowl”(another bird) minus(dropping) its 1st letter(head).
3. That is an expression of pain in 16 down? (2,3)
TO WIT : OW!(an expression when feeling pain) contained in(in) TIT(a stupid person or a woman’s breast – take your pick/booby/first part of the solution to 16 down).
4. Little rubbish is endured with ultimate character incarcerated (10)
UNDERSIZED : Anagram of(rubbish) IS ENDURED containing(with … incarcerated) Z(ultimate character in the English alphabet).
5. Tick caught by mite cut in half (6)
BISECT : SEC(short for “second”/a short period of time/a tick) contained in(caught by) BIT(mite/a very small amount).
6. Last seen of vegetarianism, then swallow – this? (4)
MEAT : Last letter of(Last seen of) “vegetarianism” plus(then) EAT(to swallow/consume).
Defn: A rhetorical question – would a vegetarian swallow this?
7. Parrot perhaps – when sick? (5-4)
DICKY BIRD : What you might call a bird, an example of which/perhaps is a parrot, when it is sick/dicky.
Defn: A children’s term for any bird, an example of which/perhaps, is a parrot.
Any reason for it being a parrot, specifically?
8. Vulnerable type meeting bird (7,4)
SITTING DUCK : SITTING(a meeting/session of, say, a committee engaged in its usual business) + DUCK(a bird).
12. Canary, relative of 8 down? (5,6)
STOOL PIGEON : How you might describe a distant relative of a “sitting duck”/solution of 8 down – another species of bird that is sitting on a stool, literally.
Defn: A … figuratively/an informer/a squealer/a singer.
14. Gal with rook mistaken, however, for the Sparrow from Minsk (4,6)
OLGA KORBUT : Anagram of(… mistaken) [GAL plus(with) ROOK ] + BUT(however/in contrast to what’s been mentioned).
Defn: Belarusian gymnast who was nicknamed ….
16. Explosive device in birdcage, say? (5,4)
BOOBY TRAP : BOOBY(a large tropical seabird with brightly coloured feet) + TRAP(cage/an enclosure).
20. 2 down that smells (6)
HOOTER : Double defn: 1st: Solution to …/owl, a bird whose typical call is a hoot; and 2nd: Slang for the organ used for the sense of smell.
He too has got a nickname:
23. Heron bagged by hunter, gentleman from the south (5)
EGRET : Hidden in(bagged by) reversal of(… from the south, in a down clue) “hunter, gentleman“.
24. American diver – turkey, dodo or drongo? (4)
LOON : Double defn: 1st: An American large diving waterbird/…; and 2nd: Stupid or ineffective person/…, the last being Australian slang.
27. Music genre, ‘ouse arising (3)
EMO : Reversal of(… arising, in a down clue) ‘OME[“home”/”house” minus “h”].
Defn: …/a style of rock music.
Paul will never be easier than this, but what a fun puzzle. Liked the homophone TO WIT beside OWL and went to sleep laughing at the outrageous POLO NECKS and the image of KYLIE. My favourite was ON BAIL.
Ta Paul & scchua for the super blog.
Weakest clue LOOTER IMO. Favourites LANDAU for the L and A and POLO NECKS for the witty Reverend William Archibald.
Thanks Paul and scchua
Never heard of EMO, but the clue was easy enough. I suppose in 3d “in 16d” gets round the problem that the reference isn’t to all of the solution.
Favourite LANDAU, which I guessed before getting LIBYA.
Well, for once I got the theme — but it would have been difficult to miss this one.
I never know what to expect from Paul. Sometimes it ends in tears; other times I breeze through and find them most fulfilling. Today’s was the latter.
OLGA KORBUT and EMO were new to me, but they weren’t impossibly difficult as the wordplay wasn’t too devious. I’m a retired music teacher and I don’t recall ever coming across “machine gun” to describe staccato, but I guess it sort of makes sense.
POLO NECKS elicited a big smile, bordering on a chuckle.
Got to love Paul. And a lovely coincidental themic connexion with Today’s Independent puzzle
Thanks Setter and Blogger
DICKY-BIRD
Is Paul alluding to the expression ‘sick as a parrot’?
I went for goon instead of loon. Seemed to also fit and couldn’t decide which one to pick. Annoying to fail a crossword by one letter!
That was fun, and got off to a FLYING start with TOM THUMB a write in on seeing it.
I knew OLGA KORBUT, she changed women’s gymnastics while I was at school and loved gymnastics, but didn’t know her nickname or that she was Belarussian – she competed for the USSR in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, before Belarus declared independence in 1990/1991. I also knew she coached, but she coached in the USA.
Thanks to Paul and scchua.
KVa @6 – I thought of sick as a parrot too – and the Tottenham mascot. There’s a story that Tottenham had a parrot mascot, brought back from a trip to Brazil, and the health of the parrot reflected Spurs’ results.
On 18A, isn’t RE = “looking at”, i.e., “giving our attention to”? (Rather than just “at”)
I really really enjoyed the birds theme. Personal favourites were a mix of themed and unthemed solutions: 1a TOM THUMB, 6a MEDUSA, 2d OWL and 16d BOOBY TRAP. But of course I had a top favourite, which parochially enough, went to our very own “Singing Budgie”, KYLIE at 13a. 14d OLGA KORBUT was a name that had gone out of my mind, but it was eminently gettable from the crossers and wordplay.
Thanks to Paul for the great grid, and to schuaa for some much-needed explanations for some answers with question marks.
Could’ve done without ref to the Colonel’s junk food in 13ac, get bombarded with it enough during the cricket season. Hey ho, fun puzzle anyway, esp no lo pecks and the cat* fed to a scot. Thanks Paul and scchua, nice pics.
Shanne@9
That’s interesting. Thanks.
Just learnt that DICKY BIRD meant ‘word’ in Cockney slang. No relevance to the clue under discussion, I think.
TO WIT
OW in 16 down: Could it be ‘OW in BOOBY TRAP’ or in other words ‘OW trapped in BOOBY/TIT’?
In 7 I think there’s an extended play on the phrase ‘didn’t say a dicky-bird’ which means didn’t say anything, and a sick parrot presumably wouldn’t talk. I didn’t think this was particularly easy for Paul, but it was all gettable. I spent too long trying to work out why 13 would be ELVIS once I got the ‘I’ crosser before seeing the LIE element and then realised it didn’t start with KFC either. ‘Minsk’ gave away the OLGA KORBUT clue, but I hadn’t come across that name for her before. Tiny typo in the blog on LANDAU – it’s L AND A not L AND D obviously. Thanks to Paul and scchua.
I really enjoyed this. I am not always a fan of Paul but today’s delightful surface theme running through the clues led to some lovely surfaces and there was less of the usual intrusion from multi-light/cross-referencing. For me, that led to a much more pleasant solve though, I acknowledge, it’s at the easier end of Paul’s spectrum. Faves included MEDUSA, ESOTERICA, KYLIE, BISECT, MEAT and OLGA KORBUT with a special mention for the POLO NECKS Spoonerism that really had me smiling.
Thanks Paul and scchua
This was a cracker – lots of variety in the clues, a simple but satisfying theme and some clever wordplay. Thanks Paul.
KVa@6: thanks for that, like scchua I’d failed to understand why it was a parrot.
And thanks to Paul and scchua.
Good fun. Found myself overthinking a lot of these clues it being Paul
Top ticks for POLO NECKS, ESOTERICA and Kid Creole and the Coconuts STOOL PIGEON
Cheers P&S
Thanks Paul and scchua. I think the second definition for FLYING refers to swifts flying great distances and hardly ever landing. Flying is a swift’s defining characteristic, it’s “what it does”. So the definition is a bit stronger than the one given here.
KVa @6 – The point of “As sick as a parrot” is that parrots are green. Thus ‘Dicky’ stomach = off-colour = sick.
I think you’re right.
Last seen of vegetarianism must mean no longer following a vegetarian diet. Thus ‘Eating Meat’ surely follows.
Fish aside.
Anybody else try (h)AWK for 2d?
Fun puzzle. Thanks to Paul and scchua
I’d class this as Medium Paul (in terms of difficulty). He rarely disappoints and this was no exception. It took me a while to get started but then gradually worked my way around the grid. Favourite was probably 22ac. The exclamation mark distracted me (as intended) from the definition and only when I had the k could I piece it together.
Thanks Paul and scchua
POLO NECKS was the perfect answer to those who don’t like Spoonerisms. Did anyone else run through the dead parrot sketch while trying to solve 7d?
Tbh Paul’s schoolboy humour does not appeal to me and never has since childhood, possibly because my European mother despised Benny Hill and turned to another channel whenever his TV show was on.
Failed 6,10ac and 5,6, 20d.
I could not parse 18ac.
Favourite: POLO NECKS.
New for me: OLGA KORBUT (thanks, google).
I agree with grantinfreo re the Colonel’s junk food in 13ac – ugh.
Usually my heart sinks when I see Paul’s name at the top of a puzzle, but this was a pleasure. Tough but fair, and none of the bird references were in any way obscure.
Thank you Paul and scchua
As a relatively new solver this is the first time I’ve completed a Paul. Hugely enjoyable both for the clues and my sense of achievement 🙂
Yes, this was a bit more straightforward than many of Paul’s crosswords.
I was stuck for a while, thinking ‘Little character’ was one from Little Women, but I did like the wordplay of TOM THUMB. I was also misled (myzzled!) by the machine gun dude not being Kelly. LIBYA seemed to me to be well-hidden. Paul is a master of silly Spoonerisms and no lo pecks was suitably daft.
Thanks Paul and scchua (I liked the train turntable video, choo choo!)
Parsed TOWIT as KVa@13 using all of 16d BOOBY TRAP.
Muppet Show – Rowlf and Sam the Eagle – Tit Willow (s01e20) – 1974 – a 50th (Golden) anniversary
‘On a tree by a river a little tom–tit
Sang “Willow, tit willow, tit willow”
And I said to him, “Dicky-bird, why do you sit…’
This was entertaining. Like AlanC I particularly liked TO WIT next to OWL.
In POLO NECKS, “tops” is obviously the definition, but what (if anything) does it mean in the surface?
(People from the Middle Ages onwards gave pet names to birds, so that what were originally the daw, the pie and the redbreast became Jack daw, Mag pie and Robin redbreast, and these became their actual names. On the other hand, Jenny wren and (for all of them) DICKY BIRD just remained as children’s terms.)
Many thanks Paul and scchua.
Paul is a nice bunch of different setters, and today we got the fun one: no low pecks, indeed! I liked getting TO WIT, HOOTER and OWL in the same puzzle. I remember OLGA KORBUT, but not her nickname – had to look that up. Liked KYLIE, TOM THUMB and STACCATO (last in).
Didn’t spot the BURDEN homophone. The albatross as a burden is a reference to the one in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner – hung about the neck of the man who shot it as a sign of his guilt. Albatrosses are BIG birds – that would have been quite a burden.
What Jacob @26 said.
Top class from the master, even though this was at the easy end for Paul. Great fun all the way although no low pecks was the gem today.
I smiled at so many of these. OWL and TO WIT side by side! KYLIE and her junk food. Just brilliant.
Thanks Paul and scchua
Paul at his lightest, most enjoyable. POLO NECKS is a top notch Spoonerism, KYLIE is great, and EMO was a joy for me as I’m coincidentally wearing a Paramore t-shirt today. BURDEN is such a dubious homophone I can only assume it’s a deliberate attempt to trigger the usual objectors. Great fun all round.
[23dn? I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention….]
Thanks Paul & scchua, what larks!
Liked the pairing of HOOTER & LOOTER, OWL & TOWIT (which I saw as OW trapped), the position of BISECT, and the UNDERSIZED 1a.
Terrific crossword puzzle, many thanks to Paul and to scchua for the blog. I was another one who hadn’t realised that ‘dicky-bird’ was rhyming slang for ‘word’. And extra thanks to FrankieG@29 for the hilarious Muppet link 🙂
This was really good fun. Many ticks, but the best of them were KYLIE, EMO, ON BAIL and the delightful DICKY BIRD.
Thank you Paul & scchua – and also FrankieG@29 for the Muppet link: a rendition of that song that’s even better than Eric Idle’s from the famous ENO production. What’s more, it successfully eradicated Kid Creole & The Coconuts’ “Stool Pigeon”, which had been flapping around in my mind.
My heart sank when I saw the setter’s name but ploughed on regardless. Glad I did as it was quite fun. Many thanks to both
I’m another who is not always a fan of Paul, though pace michelle@25 I’m not sure there was much in the way of schoolboy humour in this one. After a rather slow start I picked up speed and managed to complete it without too much difficulty. I confess that I had to Google the sparrow from Minsk which then brought back memories from the 1970s. Good to see the photo of Jimmy Durante (“Schnozzle”). Reminded me of a friend my late mother had many years ago. She had a rather large nose. When speaking with her my mother once used the expression: “it’s as plain as the nose on your face”. It was said perfectly innocently. My mother was the last person on Earth to say something hurtful to anyone. But the friend took offence and never forgave her. You can’t be too careful it seems (!). With thanks to Paul and scchua.
Ampersand @27: great feeling innit?
En route to “No low” I was looking at the Latin NOLO “I don’t want to”, as in “Nolo Contendere” – it almost works, but is clearly wrong in retrospect.
Another red herring was 7d where I tried to make polygon/polly gone/dead parrot work, but it was not meant to be.
Wait, there was a theme?
An enjoyable and entertaining puzzle, and I can do no better than go along with Postmark’s take on it (@15). I guessed LOON and failed to get BURDEN – I think I once knew that meaning of albatross, but it came back to me only when I saw it here.
Thanks to Paul, scchua and other commenters.
A fun puzzle, thanks Paul and scchua! I agree with KVa@13 about 3d, it seems as though “OW” is in a booby trap, trapped by a booby.
Troops, could someone please help?
I am not looking at the blog yet but I have no solutions at all.
Could a few hints be thrown my way as a “ way in” please?
Thoroughly enjoyed this, as an enduring Paul admirer. Last one in STACCATO…
Steffen @44, I think it’s always good to look for some anagrams:
11A (ignore ‘with’ which is a linker)
25A
29A
4D (plus last letter)
14D (plus another word for however)
steffen@44
Think ‘hidden’ suggestions at 21a and 23d; anagram at 29a (but with two possible indicators).
Stick at it
Thanks, Paul and scchua. Liked the pictures!
I’m a bit surprised at how many had not heard of a LOON. Although the bird is known in Britain as the Great Northern Diver, under its North American name the common loon is one of the national symbols of Canada. The loon appears on the Canadian dollar coin, which is therefore referred to as a loonie. Cheeky, those Canadians, eh?
I once wrote the following clue:
Various loons? (6)
mrpenney I knew of it as maybe some sort of bird but more so as “cream-faced loon” in Macbeth until another crossword a few weeks back
[Also, as an aside, it’s been a continuous surprise to me that this site lacks any Canadian regulars. It’s the one big Anglophone nation unrepresented here, I think, given appropriate definitions of “big” and “Anglophone”.]
Glad to see a couple of commenters also spotted the ‘Sick as a parrot’ (7d) and ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (26a) links. Loon always makes me remember Katharine Hepburn’s wonderful imitation of their call in ‘On Golden Pond’. A v enjoyable grid. Ty Paul.
Steffen@44
[To help you understand cryptic crosswords there is a very good app, Crosswordgenius, which gives hints, answers with easily understood explanations and guides to understanding each clue. There are also a couple of AI sites like Danword.com but they only give the answer and no explanation. Fifteensquared is excellant but you get all the answers rather just a single answer if stuck.
Once you are understanding clues and getting answers then use the check feature on the Guardian online version. Eventually you will find that you do not need either the app or the check feature and really enjoy cryptics]
I am surprised no one has given a link to a loon calling. Absolutely amazing. Nor a drongo. Not so amazing. A turkey everyone knows? Dodo – not so successful, not surprising.
Thanks schuua and Paul
Thank you for clues so far.
4d remains impenetrable for me.
In 6a, what is the definition/what is the wordplay?
Thanks scchua and KVa and others for fleshing out the dicky bird. I found this easier than yesterday but no walkover thanks to usual Pauline lateral thinking requirements, so congratulations Ampersand@27. Maybe the first time I have seen “surreptitiously” as an anagram indicator, was going to moan as I thought it only meant furtively etc, but Collins tells me it can be related to a misrepresentation of the truth, so I gave that one a big tick in the end. Overall I found it fun as usual, thanks Paul.
Great puzzle. Held up for a bit with SLOT-ON for 28ac. Grr.
Steffen@55
4d is an anagram of IS ENDURED as indicated by ‘rubbish’, plus Z (the last letter) ‘incorporated’ into the overall anagram. Meaning: ‘lttle’.
In 6a the definition is ‘monster’ (a mythical female). Formed via two syllables of three letters each; first one a shortened, but common parlance, for a particular sea; second syllable is the ubiquitous initialised form of a particular country. I struggled with that one.
Ace puzzle. Polo Necks was so good.
Steffen@55L One of the things cryptics throw up quite often is that “main” equals “sea”. It’s really not common knowledge, but you may have heard of the term “the Spanish Main” which was the name for the part of their empire in the Americas back in the day. So if you see “main” it might be “sea” or a particular sea.
Thanks 58/59
Dave Ellison @54 – the call of the loon will be familiar to fans of late 80s/early 90s dance music as it features as a sample in Pacific State by 808 State and was subsequently borrowed by several other artists.
Thanks for the puzzle, Paul. Lots of fun – laughed out loud at “TO WIT” next to OWL, and the spoonerism. And thanks scchua for the blog.
mrpenney @49.
And a 2 dollar coin is “toonie”.
Steffen @60: One of the things that makes cryptics seem so impenetrable is that you need to build up an arsenal of these synonyms – some of which are used very frequently. Soldiers and sailors can be all sorts of things, for example – many of which aren’t commonly used in everyday speech. That’s why 15squared is so useful (I’d have loved to have it when I started out). However you do with any day’s crossword it’s always worth checking the solutions to see what devices have been used.
Can anyone explain why surreptitiously indicates an anagram? It means stealthily, secretly according to my dictionary.
Great puzzle otherwise, thanks Paul and scchua.
I had (T)ERN for 2d at first.
MrPenny@51
I believe there are indeed a few Canucks solving these, not sure about being regular contributors, though I stand to be corrected… I (British-Canadian, living in BC) comment on here rarely but follow the blog daily, and I do comment often on the Guardian blog (I mean under the actual crossword.) There is also “MarkinCan”, for one, who is on the other blog as a regular contributor, and there are likely others. We are out there, though you may be right about us not contributing much. Perhaps we should be more vocal 🙂
You are also absolutely right about our loonies and toonies!
My first Paul and I enjoyed it immensely. These are the sorts of clue I really enjoy (well, Sponnerisms aside) – witty with tons of natural surfaces, showing that a difficult crossword does not have to be miserable experience! My favourites have all been mentioned.
A big thanks to Paul and thanks to scchua for the excellent blog
mrpenny @51, I am a Canuck who contributes fairly regularly – hello Pat@66 – so there are a few of us out there. Oakvillereader comes to mind as well. I’m sure there are many others.
gladys@31 talks of the different Pauls, and I agree. I wondered whether this was a Mudd puzzle that inadvertently migrated to the Guardian. Mudd is a favourite of mine, while Paul usually isn’t, for the reasons noted by gladys and PostMark@ 15. I loved this one.
I endorse Conrad’s comment @10 – in 18a LOOTER, “looking at” (not just “at”) gives RE.
Thanks Paul for the fun, and sschua for the colourful and helpful blog.
[Arjeyeski @52: it was as recently as the blog for Picaroon on January 9th that Gazzh and I discussed the Cry of the Loon in electronica and Katharine Hepburn movies. Years before On Golden Pond, the Cry of the Loon was the running gag in the Katharine Hepburn & Cary Grant screwball Bringing Up Baby]
Paul a complete mystery as usual, hardest of the week for me.
Thanks for the hints.
Before I visited Canada, many moons ago, I read somewhere that at one of the places we were staying there were often loons on the lake at night. I pictured a whole lot of louts with jetskis, and was pleased to discover that this was not so.
mrpenny@51. A Northern English Canadian citizen here. It helps with some of the British and American clues, but not with cricket and Australian pop stars. I failed to get ON BAIL, BURDEN, KYLIE, STACCATO, POLONECKS. Otherwise was quite pleased that I managed to finish the rest of it.
Steffen @60, I would respectfully suggest that you stick with the Quiptics for now until you become more familiar with the structure of the clues. Then look at the puzzle and read the blog to figure out how they arrived at the answer. Your persistence will win in the end. Keep going.
I think KVa @13 has the correct parsing for 3dn (TO WIT): take “trap” to be part of the wordplay.
It’s too bad this one didn’t fall to Pierre to blog. I thought at first that he’d have to supply a large number of bird links, but if I recall his self-imposed rules correctly (the bird must be the entire answer, not merely part of the clue or answer), he’d only need an owl and a loon.
Mandarin @34 – as ever with homophones it’s in the eye (ear?) of the beholder, but I pronounce “bird an albatross” and “burden albatross” identically. Though I suspect it’s probably more a near-enough homophone combined with a little jab at dialect-based debate than a deliberate nod to a mild Suffolk accent!
Am I the only one to have considered a booby trap could be described as a ‘bird’ cage, especially if it was of the underwired variety? Yes I was brought up watching Benny Hill and Dick Emery on the tele as a kid.
Loons have a variety of calls. Some are definitely NOT the peaceful one posted earlier. Some are warning calls (look for an eagle overhead) or group get-together tremolos late at night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVJHQo6yQr0