How to be a fly on nature’s wall

Eavesdrop awhile with these nature sounds, and even the preposterously guttural rumblings of an alpha elephant seal will start speaking to you.

This Web meander, produced by the California Library of Natural Sounds at the Oakland Museum of California, exhibits and decodes the state’s many calls of the wild. It’s a breezy audio tour of eight habitat regions, from the coastline to the desert.

Among the strange attractions in this electronic menagerie: a spotted owl barking to attract a mate, and red-spotted toads’ eerie ringing to assert their amphibious territories. If your motor home invades the space of a red-tailed hawk during breeding season, expect to be chased off with a foreboding scream.

The recordists caught a hawk’s screech by lurking next to a road, waiting for “large and noisy metal monsters” to drive by and challenge the raptor.

It sounds like the red-tail won.

Katharine Mieszkowski