Hey! Listen to me! (video)

Budgie Whistling

Whistling match

Budgies love whistling and chirping; it shows that they're in a good mood. Budgies are social birds and love to communicate with each other, but also with you! It can be a fun bonding experience to teach your budgie a few tunes. It's a good way to make them used to you. They might learn some of the tunes very quickly and start whistling them for you when you come home!

Image © fermer02.ru

Using repetition is a good way to teach your budgie whistling tunes. You can do it each time you walk past the cage and make a little game out of it with your budgie, a "whistling match".

Singing reflection in the mirror

Budgies get attached to their family and flock mates, but when they are held in captivity, they absolutely value any sign of a living budgie. That is why budgies are attracted to their mirror image. The end result of this attachment is usually a series of excited chirping and dancing around the mirror. Just like they like to play whistling matches with you, they also like to do it with their fellow budgies.

Image © da-club.ru

There is some concern with mirrors amongst budgie owners. Some believe that your budgie may fall in love with the mirror bird and never form a bond with you. I don't think this can actually happen for real, unless you're only keeping one bird. Budgies desperately need a companion of their own kind and when they don't have it, they will go crazy in front of the mirror. I can imagine that happens, so again, I want to advise every budgie owner to have at least two budgies.

Strange noises

Budgies also tend to pick up the strangest noises: microwave beeps, noises from other animals or machines, your voice saying "good night, my baby" and much more. You would be surprised at what your bird can learn to mimic! So if you hear a funny noise, it could be your budgie talking :)

Whistling or talking?

Image © ca.shine.yahoo.com

Some people believe that if you whistle to your budgies, they will lose the will to talk to you. But this is most probably a myth. In general, budgies only learn to talk when they want to. That means you have to keep them happy. And by whistling, you keep them happy because they really enjoy it, like they enjoy music. So there is nothing wrong with it :)

Tip: teach your budgie to say where he lives.

The survival chances of an escaped budgerigar are very small.

Some owners have taught their budgerigars to say the adress where they live, or the phone number of their owner. If you do that too, there is a chance you may be reunited with your feathered friend, in case he escapes one day. Let's hope that never happens. Domesticated budgerigars are an easy prey for many dangers in the outside world.

Meet Erwin the budgie

Here's another example of a budgie that is a master imitator of his owner's voice. Budgies just love to talk all day long, and they want to speak our language to take part in our conversations. Notice how he even gets all the nuances in the woman's voice right! I named him Budgie of the Month because the way he says "Goodnight my baby" is simply too adorable =)

Enjoy!

Victor the Budgie (1)

Victor was, like many budgies, bought at a pet store, at the age of 8 weeks. He lived from 1997 until 2001, and in those years he did the most remarkable things. Things that might send chills down your spine.

Ryan Reynolds awoke one morning on a holiday and looked over at his budgie, Victor, who looked back at Ryan and said, "Pretty Ryan, where's Onie?". It was at this moment when Victor commented on the empty bed beside Ryan normally occupied by his wife, Apollonia, that Ryan began to wonder if Victor was no bird brain.

"A year ago, he started to say things I hadn't taught him, and he was describing things I was doing", Ryan says.

Ryan Reynolds is a Canadian psittalinguist: a person who interpreters the language of the parrot family. His budgie Victor had a vocabulary of over 1,000 words, which he used in context. Basically this means that Victor knew well what he was talking about and not just mimicing human speech or talking gibberish.

Reynolds, founder of the Budgie Research Group, worked long and hard on the deconstruction of Victor's recordings. He later reached out to others with talking budgies, coining his work in the term Psittalinguistics. "A sensitive ear is crucial because budgies talk at a rate of 150-200 words a minute", he says. "It takes a lot of skill and concentration. Budgies have a particular way of pronouncing words. It's like picking up accents."

From left to right: talking budgies Betty (mate to Victor), Toovic, Topper, Amber

"This is going to sound crazy, but they talk about spiritual things: God, the afterlife, a better world for them", Reynolds says. Could this reflect the thought of a thousand generations of budgerigars who had to survive the harsch inland conditions of Australia for millions of years? Or is it the thought of budgerigars who are locked up all their life for the entertainment of mankind?

Reynolds says that Victor predicted a "tsunami on the South Bank of Asia" and warned of an upcoming "super volcano". Only a few years later In the weeks before he died, Victor said that God was coming to take him away.

"One thing I have learned is a budgies thinking process is many times faster than ours. By the time we analyze and process one thought, they may have processed several of their own. This is mainly due to their anatomy being so much smaller than ours. Because of this, their brain waves do not have to travel as far, therefore allowing them to process thoughts more quickly. Additionally, because the average life span of a budgie is around ten years, one hour to us would be equal to several hours for them. This is evident in the way Victor talked. He had to make a conscious effort to slow down so he could communicate with people. This also enabled him to learn much faster than we do. Victor began talking at less than one year old and he was only a little more than three when he died. During that time his mind had rose to a level of an adult person. This may seem hard to believe but he proved this in many of his later conversations and recordings."

Victor died several years ago, which makes it impossible for anyone else to study him. This is one of the reasons why some people suspect that Victor's ability was just a hoax set up by Reynolds. Is he just saying all those words to make his owner happy? Or is Reynolds really right about Victor, and many other talking budgies? Do they understand us? Do they somehow have the ability to see into the future? Or do they just feel certain things that we can't feel - like birds that stop singing right before an earthquake is about to take place? What do you think?

Here is already one recording of Victor:



More about this remarkable budgie in the next post.

Why do budgies talk?

Recently, Bill Marks from Australia wrote to Burke's Backyard to tell them about his amazing budgerigar, Frederick. Freddie is a male budgie of 4 years old who has an amazing vocabulary. When they visited Bill and Freddie, the budgie introduced himself, welcomed Burke's Backyard to their house, told them what he likes to eat and even asked Don Burke if he liked the garden.










Freddie has learnt about 85 phrases during these four years, including really long sentences. While he was chatting happily with the people from Burke's backyard, he said things like:

"Hello, how are you today?"
"What's your name? Mine's Frederick. Welcome to our house."
"You're a funny man Bill."
"Dick Smith is a true Aussie, just like me."
"Don do you like our garden?"
"Pop cleans my house every day."
"Bill, where's the pussycat?"
"I can talk the leg off an iron pot, can't I Bill."
"More spinach please pop."

"See you later alligator."
"I'm a clever little boy, aren't I?"
"My pop can do anything."
"I'd like some corn please."
"Juliet it's Romeo calling."
"Elementary my dear William."
"I prefer celery to apple."
"Have a good day."
"Bill don't interrupt when I'm talking."

Now, why is it that budgies talk? Don explains that it's no coincidence that male budgerigars are the best talkers. In the wild, each budgerigar, the females in particular, have their own song. When two budgies mate, the male learns to imitate the song from the female, so that a bond is formed between them. A pet budgie wants to do the same thing, he wants to talk to his owner who takes care of him, to create a bond. They want to sing the same song, and the best way to do that is to speak the same language - our language!

Pictures and information from http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/

The Bird with the Largest Vocabulary in the World

Puck, the champion of all talking birds (photo: eparrots.biz)

"Puck, a budgerigar, or budgie (popularly known as a parakeet in America), was accepted into the 1995 Guinness Book of World Records as "the bird with the largest vocabulary in the world." He was acknowledged as having 1,728 words when the Guinness Book went to press. The documentation for his feat took place over a six-month period when 21 volunteer observers in 21 separate sessions took notes on what they heard Puck say. Several observers were members of the Redwood Empire Cage Bird Club (Sonoma County, California), and most were familiar with various species of parrots. Two of the volunteers were avian veterinarians.

In addition to the volunteer observations, tape recordings and a video were provided as documentation for Guinness. Puck's owner/caregiver, Camille Jordan, of Petaluma, California has about 30 hours of Puck tape recordings, videos and detailed records of every word she heard spoken! Puck appeared on several Bay Area newscasts in December 1991 after an article was written about him in American Cage-Bird Magazine. Another article about Puck appeared in Bird World (Vol. 15, No. 6, 1994).

Rather than just mimicking, Puck created his own phrases and sentences. He often used the appropriate phrase in a situation, and sometimes displayed an uncanny understanding of his environment.

For example, on Christmas morning, 1993 Puck was entertaining himself on the coffee table in the living room when Camille and her husband heard him say: "It's Christmas. That's what's happening. That's what it's all about. I love Pucky. I love everyone."

Unfortunately, Puck's life was too brief. He was only five years old when he died of a gonadal tumor on August 25th, 1994(rip). He had been accepted into the Guinness Book only a few months earlier.

Puck appeared in the 1995 through 1998 Guinness Books, was omitted from the 1999 through 2002 editions and reappeared in the 2003 and 2004 editions. The 2005 paperback Guinness Book has not been released at the time of this writing. Readers should note that recordholders will not necessarily appear in every Guinness Book!"

(http://www.budgerigars.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?9433-puck&p=108781)