We have a pair of owls maybe more, that have taken up residence by my parents house. They live by a wooded creek bottom. The owls are at least as big as a barred owl. They make all these weird chirps and whistling noises and nonstop make this SKREE call. This evening one was looking over the meadow I was hunting. After it noticed me it flew off clicking its beak like it was angry. It was right at dark so I couldn't see a lot of detail. Before this summer never had these here.

Saw whet owls make a repetitive call sounding like the olden day loggers sharpening a saw by hand. They are a lot smaller though than a barred owl, though.

Chris

They're really small arent they? A little bigger than a pigeon?

might be barn owls

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/birds/index.html These the owls of Mn. Maybe you can figure it out from there. Hard to tell without a picture.

Look up Great Gray Owls, I know they make some strange noises

Look like the owl that was in the NY Christmas tree?

short earned owl

How many hoots?
If they are a four-hoot owl they may be barred owls.

We have great horned owls by us. The young of the year make a screech call every 5 to 10 minutes. Have watched them do it as they sat on the garage roof. We are in a semi wooded creek area.

Ksnow, I wonder if that might not be what it is. That would explain the timing with starting to hear them in the late summer early fall. That would be when they are on their own and hunting. What I saw was a good sized owl, didn't see the horns but it was getting pretty dark.

Waggle, never hear any hooting. I'm quite familiar with barred owls.

Mud, we still hear the screeching this time of year too. The older ones have the typical who cooks for you, who cooks for you all hoot sequence.

As cool as they are, they sure are hard on the rabbits.

There is a free App called Merlin that many bird watchers use. It has most of the calls that every bird makes, with a little work you should be able to find a match.