How A Couple Of Naturalists Cracked The Code Of Animal Language In Yellowstone

George Bumann learned to speak raven when he and his wife Jenny Golding moved to the Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley.

It was 2002 and a pair of ravens claimed the topmost piece of the corral fence as their perch, repeating the same three-note call endlessly, especially in the mornings.

"It just went on and on and on," Bumann remembered recently, seated in his studio just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone.

As he told the story, he skillfully and realistically mimicked each sound.

"It's like, ‘What are you saying? What is going on here?’" he explained.

Bumann later realized, "That's their song. They're the largest songbird in the world, and that's their song."

As Bumann listened more carefully, he noticed the three-note call would change when a car pulled up at the foot of the Buffalo Ranch driveway. 

The ravens were emphasizing their territorial claim, announcing to any listening: "This is our turf. Anything that comes out of that lunch pail, you know that grocery bag, it's ours."

But the raven vocabulary extended far beyond territorial songs. One day while walking his dog, Bumann heard yet another variation. Looking up, he saw a raven chasing a golden eagle out of its territory. 

"From then on I knew every time I heard that variation, that's a golden eagle,” he said.

Years later, over lunch with a bird biologist friend, Bumann mentioned the call. 

"He's like, ‘Oh gosh. Yeah. That's how we know to get the traps ready for the eagles — the ravens rat them out before they ever get close to us,'" Bumann recalled.

There is even a different variation of a raven’s call for bald eagles.

"I've managed to pull it off a few times," Bumann said, describing how he’s impressed those he’s with by predicting that a bald eagle is about to fly by. "I think a bald eagle's coming, probably from over there. And a minute goes by and oh, there it is."

Talking Turkey

This journey into animal languages began decades earlier in upstate New York, where a young Bumann hunted, fished and trapped, doing "everything that the culture I grew up in offered." 

He learned to call turkeys, ducks and geese — even competing in the New York State turkey calling amateur open when he was about 19, finishing second overall and placing in the top three or four in the natural voice competitions, where competitors use just their vocal cords.

Sitting behind a curtain, judges evaluated calls based on their accuracy to archetypal turkey sounds. 

"Real turkeys are not invited to sit back in that curtain," Bumann realized. "Real turkeys competing would not win."

Once, a state competition judge said, "If you hear a lot of really good calling out in the woods, it's not a turkey, it's a hunter, because turkeys make a lot of mistakes."

"Mistakes?" Bumann thought. "Wait a minute, that doesn't add up, right? Mistakes are interpreted in this way if someone doesn't know the language."

Even through graduate school in wildlife ecology, Bumann felt he wasn't getting closer to understanding what animals were really saying. 

Then a breakthrough came at a nature preserve near Blacksburg, Virginia, in a spot locals called Eden. Bumann would sit there before going to classes and lab work.

One morning, huddled by a rosebush, Bumann was suddenly "inundated with birds, like, birds come from everywhere." 

A couple minutes later, he saw a woman and her dog hiking on the ridgeline above about 100 yards away. 

"It clicked. Those two things were related,” he said. 

The birds weren't seeking his company — they were escaping ahead of the disturbance. 

"Those birds, if not themselves, took the word of others who were closest to that person when she was hundreds of yards away. They're escaping ahead of the arrival and hanging out until the disturbance leaves,” Bumann recalled.

"My cranium just exploded," he said. "I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is what I've been missing my whole life.’"

The Book and Beyond

That realization became the foundation for Bumann's book, "Eavesdropping on Animals: What We Can Learn From Wildlife Conversations." His goal was simple: "Share what took me four decades to learn with someone so they can start doing it right now."

The Wall Street Journal took notice, with a reviewer describing how Bumann probes the idea of developing a “peaceful coexistence, even rapport” with animals through sound. 

He encourages readers to develop their own listening habits and experiences. 

To help people build these skills, Bumann offers an online course that goes deeper than the book. He hopes to reach all types of students and communities, suggesting urban readers “go for a long walk on a short sidewalk.”

He hopes we all can take the time to really tune into the animal sounds around us, and determine their impact on other living things. 

Just don’t talk back in Yellowstone. 

No Talking To The Animals

In national parks, hooting back at owls and howling with the wolves is discouraged, though humans seem to share a universal urge to chime in when wild things let loose with wild sounds. 

A friend who was guiding filmmaker Ken Burns at Hell Roaring Overlook had to politely tell the director of “The National Parks — America’s Best Idea” to zip it.  

"The wolves are howling, and Ken Burns starts howling back at the wolves," Bumann said. The friend had to intervene: "It's Ken Burns, but that's not allowed."

The reason is serious: "Functionally, you can get the animal killed," Bumann explained, recalling a birding incident in Virginia when someone used a "pish" call to attract a sparrow. The bird came to investigate — and was immediately killed by a swooping hawk. 

"We killed that bird,” he said. 

Listening To The Landscape

Today, Yellowstone is dotted with autonomous recording units — around 25 in the northern range, with plans for 25 more in the central and southern portions of the park. One sits in Bumann's backyard above Gardiner, Montana, listening digitally in a place with stellar views toward Mammoth Hot Springs.

These monitors record sounds 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the recordings are analyzed by AI models.

The goal is to catalog specific sounds like wolf howls and answer questions like: When do wolves actually howl? The traditional literature says dawn and dusk, but Bumann knows better: "They howl all night long. That's when they’re out."

This bio-acoustics data reveals another truth: true silence is "functionally extinct" in Yellowstone, he said. On average, every 15 to 20 minutes, a jet flies over the park.

Coyote Telegraph

With their eerie cackles and howls, coyotes loudly demonstrate the power of wildlife communication. 

They have a specific alarm call for wolves — a distinctive "whoa whoa whoa" bark-howl that researchers first identified before wolves were even released from their pens in the mid-1990s during the initial reintroduction of these predators to Yellowstone. 

Coyotes make this call only when they can actually see wolves, typically 200 to 300 yards away. For Bumann, hearing that call from two miles away means one thing: "I know there's wolves over on Mount Everts,” which rises just south of his home and studio. 

This time of year, Townsend solitaires defend the juniper trees around his place, crying out in a way that tells Bumann bohemian waxwings are approaching.

"Some of these things are extremely specific in their meaning and context," Bumann said. “And as soon as you start making those associations, your world expands. You start living miles beyond where your senses typically let you experience. And every single one of us can do this."

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.