Budgie Whistling

Budgies love whistling and chirping, it can show that your budgie is happy and healthy. Don’t forget that Budgies are very social animals and love to communicate, and that doesn’t stop when you bring them into your house! It can be a fun bonding experience to have whistling matches with your budgie, and once they learn a few tunes they generally pick up more and more over time. They tend to pick up the strangest sounds too, from wild birds to microwave beeps, you would be surprised at what your budgie can learn to mimic!

Repetition: Just like teaching your budgie words and phrases, using repetition is a great way to teach your budgie new whistling tunes. A fun place to start off is with a wolf whistle (it sounds along the lines of “fwhoot whoo”), whenever you walk by your budgie’s cage wolf whistle a couple of times, when you are playing with your budgie be sure to wolf whistle a few times etc. Don’t be shy with your whistling runs, budgies generally chirp and whistle in no particular order so mix it up and eventually your budgie will start mimicking some of your sounds.

Even whistling techniques as simple as 3 short whistles can be fun to teach your Budgie, once they learn how to do it you can have back and forward whistling matches with your budgie. After I had taught this technique to my Budgie he started trying to get my attention by whistling 3 short whistles at me when I walked past his cage!

Mirrors: Budgies are very social animals, when they are kept in captivity they tend to attach themselves to the family they live with. However most budgies will also attach themselves to their mirror image! The end result of this attachment is usually a series of excited chirping and dancing around and can be a great source of entertainment for your budgie.

There is some concern with mirrors amongst budgie enthusiasts, some believe that your budgie may fall in love with the mirror bird and never form a bond with you. In my experience I haven’t seen this, but I also know that every bird is different and that some may become more infatuated than others so this is something to keep in mind if your Budgie is spending a little bit too much time in front of the mirror.

Whistling to Budgies stops them from talking: This is mostly a myth; some people believe if you don’t whistle to your budgie it improves their chances of talking. I don’t think it makes a difference if you whistle to your budgie in terms of whether or not your budgie will start talking, generally a budgie will talk if it has the desire too (obviously there are some other factors here, but whistling to your budgie won’t affect them). If anything, I believe that a happy budgie is a budgie that whistles and chirps, and a happy budgie is more likely to talk to you.

However if your Budgie doesn’t talk despite your many hours of effort, you can attempt to stop whistling with your Budgie if you feel it will help his/her vocal abilities, but I personally enjoy a good whistling match with my feathered friends.