1845 S. Judd Margaret i. xvii. 169 From the dusky woods darted out those birds that bide a New England winter; dove-colored nuthatches..quank quanking among the hemlocks.

1938 G. Taggard Coll. Poems 147 After velvet hours while only toads Quanked away in faint darkness,..She woke.

1965 E. Richardson Living Island 215 It is the female [duck] which quanks.

2003 Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat (Nexis) 13 July d1 The frogs..aren't sleepy. All over town, they'll continue for hours—grunting, chirping, barking, quanking, trilling.

1916 Wilson Bull. 28 25 The male Nuthatch paid little attention to these invaders during the daytime, but toward sunset he remained near the hole and asserted his rights by excited ‘quanking’.

1965 E. Richardson Living Island 215 Oftener we hear quanking among the tidal pools..as males beat their way to the enticing sounds.

1842 Z. Thompson Hist. Vermont i. iii. 95/1 During the fall and winter they come into our orchards and yards, where their rough quank, two or three times repeated, may be often heard.

1854 W. H. C. Hosmer Poet. Wks. I. 266 ‘Quank! quank!’ the Nuthatch sings, As his horny bill on the white-oak rings.

1916 Wilson Bull. 28 24 The well known ejaculation ‘quank’, a call at certain distances remarkably suggestive of the human voice, is often employed when the bird [sc. the white-breasted nuthatch] seems excited.

1921 Chambers's Jrnl. Mar. 178/1 He could even hear the nasal laugh of the zebra, the resonant ‘Quank’ of the gnus, the rattle of horn against horn as the bucks made play.

2006 Atlanta Jrnl.-Constit. (Nexis) 4 June ms2 The call of the green tree frog was a ‘quank, quank’, which can be so noisy at times that people call wildlife biologists wanting to know how to shut it up.