Listen to the 5 Dumbest-Sounding Birds of North America

A number of us here at Motherboard are major bird nerds, and why not? Birds are, to use a scientific term, extremely dope. Aves is such a varied class of creatures—from the flightless cassowary capable of disemboweling a person with its claws, to the birds of paradise with their insane plumage and manic mating rituals.

But sometimes birds are just huge goofy dorks. Nick Lund, aka The Birdist, teamed up with NPR to make a video featuring the dumbest-sounding birds of North America. For example: the American Bittern, a wading bird, sounds appropriately like a slowly-leaking faucet, while the Bald Eagle has a pipsqueaky call better suited to a songbird than a majestic bird of prey.

My personal favorite is the Willow Ptarmigan, which makes a variety of dumb sounds including one that's reminiscent of a drunk guy demanding a bagel.

The audio was furnished by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which archived over 150,000 bird and animal recordings in its Macaulay Library back in 2013. (Check out the sound of a walrus underwater. At some points, it's a vaguely rave-like beat.)

Bird calls are largely unique to each species, and serve a number of crucial purposes: attracting a mate, warning of danger, establishing territory. But sometimes they just sound super dopey. Sorry guys.