Mysterious sound at night

Almost every night for the last month, we have been hearing a consistent sharp barking/shriek/call in the woods behind our house. It's always the same sound (no real variation except sometimes in pitch) and repeats for 30+ minutes at a time. We were fairly certain it is a fox based on some internet searches of fox sounds. We are wondering if we have a den somewhere as we hear the sound for multiple hours a night and it comes from relatively the same area. We have also seen foxes in the non wooded portion of our backyard before, so we know they are around.

On discussing this with a neighbor, she thought it was a bird when she heard it, and we ran a sound file of the bark/call/shriek through the Merlin bird app and it's strongly suggesting a Great Horned Owl. We googled those sounds and some of the calls do sound similar.

So now we're scratching our heads!

It doesn't seem that I can attach the sound file here, but if there is another way to get it to you, I would be very interested in your opinion if we have a fox or an owl living in our woods. Thanks!

Thanks for sending us the sound file (also shared here on YouTube). As I mentioned in our phone call, the calls that you are hearing in your woods are juvenile Great Horned Owl begging calls.

They likely left the nest in mid to late spring, and they’ll stick with their parents throughout the summer learning necessary hunting and survival skills.

In the fall, the adults will chase them out of their territory, leaving the young to find a territory of their own

Enjoy the sounds!

-Chief Naturalist John Kolar