Make the same noise back to your bird

[HeatherG]

I have a game that I play with my birds but especially with Jasper. He makes a few whistles in sequence and I make the same sounds back to him. Kind of like that simple Simon game from the 80s.

I can’t make the calls sound exactly the same, but I can imitate the pitch of the call. (If it’s a very upset noise I don’t make that.) Jasper seems to like this and we can repeat this for at least a few cycles.

Do any of you play this game with your parrots?

 

[wrench13]

Yup, I do that with Salty sometimes, or sing back to him. He is a better singer!!

 

[ravvlet]

Ah yeah, Kirby loves it if I whistle back to him. If I change it up too sometimes he’ll imitate me.

 

[Rozalka]

Yes, I do it with Zenek too! He whistles and waits for me to repeat and then he whistles again, when he changes the sound, I change it too and we do it until one of us gets bored

Sometimes I "chirp" after bourkes but their voice is too hard to repeat, so I do it only by saying "chirp"

 

[HeatherG]

I’m glad I’m not the only person doing this. I sometimes worry because I don’t know what I’m “saying” but as long as I don’t make upset noises back it seems ok. I do the same with Willow but not as much because he doesn’t have so much variety in his calls. Jasper changes up the pitch.

When you are auditioning for a chorus you have to sing back triads played on a piano. That’s what this feels like to me.

 

[Cottonoid]

Cotton has a beep that sounds like "hel-lo" and we'll do it back and forth for a while

I can't mimicks Opie's squeaks very well but pretty much anything I say to him he'll start chatting back

 

[saxguy64]

I do that with my guys all the time. No doubt they chat amongst themselves when I'm not there and get a chuckle over what they taught ME to say 🤣

Tucker does like to do whatever click, boop, etc. noise that strikes his fancy at the time, and repeats a bunch of times. Then it's game on. I have to make the sound back to him the same number of times, so it requires my full attention to count how many. He gets visibly upset if I get it wrong and repeats until I get it right, then he'll do it a different number. It's hard to keep up because he's fast, and the number is generally between 5 and 15, sometimes more. The game usually goes on for about 10 solid minutes before he gets tired of my mistakes lol!

 

[Cottonoid]

I almost forgot - I did this with my visiting Senegal a while ago and he cocked his head, looked at me and said "what did you say?" 😂

 

[HeatherG]

Wow! So you guys do counting games with your birds? That’s so interesting!

Makes me wish I had a giant aviary and a whole bunch of budgies (or Quakers) that I could watch. (And mess with their heads occasionally.)