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Comment by rdiddly | Hacker News Reader

This seems as good a time/place as any to remind everyone that the sound an eagle makes isn't the screech Hollywood has made you believe it is (that's a red-tailed hawk). It's actually relatively non-macho (for a superpower's mascot anyway) and sounds like it's laughing.

The hawk says: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/sounds

The eagle says: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bald_Eagle/sounds

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I wish hollywood would make a few more recordings. They always use exactly the same one, every time they have a long shot of a wilderness scene. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, everything.

It's worse than the Wilhelm Scream.

Absolutely, I was already thinking Wilhelm Scream as I finally arrived at those words in your comment!

Edit: What we need is a satirical movie full of in-jokes, like opening a wilderness long-shot with a Wilhelm Scream.

Also most sitcom clapping and laughter is from the 50s

In Married With Children, I hear the same woman laughing in about every episode!

There’s also a stock audio sound for police radio chatter that is the same as the one in SimCity 2000. Every time I hear that (which is too often) I can’t help but think “well, you cheaped out on sound design"

I noticed that too! I thought I was going crazy until I started compiling a list of them...

"We need a dispatchment 148...mumble mumble...ksshhh"

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dklA4-ACN4k

"7806 code 5, north and garbled street"

I first heard that playing one of the first (top down) GTA games and hear it in half the police dramas I watch.

I was going to reply that “it could be worse: Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird”. But some research says he did not say exactly that, rather he said “ the Turkey is in Comparison [to the bald eagle] a much more respectable Bird”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/american-myths-b...

Eagles eat the dead cows on our farm. As I understand it from 1 minute of google searching Turkeys do not partake of dead flesh. Much more gentlemanly if you ask me.

Given the option, I suppose I'd rather have my flesh eaten after I die than before. But I respect vultures, which subsist entirely on carrion and are highly specialized to do so. Bald eagles are just too lazy to hunt unless they're forced to.

You know, one major reason we raise cows is so we can eat their dead flesh.

Maybe unpopular, but I like the chuckling screech of the bald eagle. Also barn swallows, they kind of “talk” when they are relaxed.

Oh wow, I was biking in the Berkeley/Oakland hills recently and was surprised to hear what I thought was a clear eagle call, because I never see eagles around but I frequently see red-tailed hawks. It all makes sense now!

A local radio station has "Liberty the Eagle" as its mascot. Not long ago it was updated to "Liberty, the Eagle with the voice of a red tail."

This is part of a larger phenomenon sometimes referred to as The Coconut Effect. The name comes from the practice of using coconut shells to produce the sound of horses galloping, even when the sound would not make sense in real life (e.g. galloping on a dirt path).

Once audiences become accustomed to certain sound effects, however inaccurate, they come to expect those sounds. When audiences expect the fake sound, they might even think the film/show is inaccurate if it uses a different, more accurate sound for the same effect.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect

Thanks for confirming! ... Those were eagles I saw on that run months back :) Yea they have a funny bird call, super distinct staccato, unmistakable.

Bald eagle is one of the smallest eagles, it's slightly bigger than a seagull when other eagles are considered.

TIL! What else is manufactured like this? Anyone know if a big list of examples exists?

in that recording the eagle was just chatting not in an aggressive attack mode so its not a screech sound

The whole thing is a lie.

The bald eagle screech is not that of the bald eagle.

Plenty of eagle species are bald yet the "bald" eagle isn't bald.

If you think about it, it's a fantastic metaphor for the US :-p

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