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Does your bird sing songs?

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Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Kathleen » Fri Oct 02, 2009 7:45 pm

I've seen some videos of birds singing happy birthday, jingle bells, and other little tunes. Have you taught your bird the lyrics/melody to a song?
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby theycallmeparrot » Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:54 am

I taught my cockatiel to wolf whistle in a little under two hours by leaving him alone in my bedroom, where he was initially kept for the first couple of weeks we had him until he was moved to the living room to be among everybody. He would call, so I would call back with a wolf whistle. I kept doing it until he started calling with a wolf whistle. I'm trying to teach him to sing the Kill Bill song, but progress is slow-going, what with my conure always screeching and interrupting us. Image I'm trying to teach him to whistle and sing instead of screaming all the time, but it's hard because I haven't found his "I'LL DO ANYTHING FOR THAT!!" trigger yet.
"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been, and there you will always long to return." ~ Leonardo da Vinci
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Kathleen » Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:26 pm

I imagine it's hard to do ANY kind of training if the cockatiel is constantly distracted by the conure's screeches. :(
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby MandyG » Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:23 pm

I tried to teach Mojo the following lyrics while he was clipped. He didn't pick it up though.

"I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly"

When I start singing anything he'll 'sing' along with me. It doesn't sound anything like what I'm singing or like any actual words but he seems to enjoy himself :D .
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Kathleen » Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:58 pm

Haha, that is cute.

What a great song for a bird to learn :lol:
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Michael » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:38 pm

Birds don't need to believe it, they just do it! :airmail:
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Kathleen » Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:20 am

What do you mean? Kili didn't know she could fly, she started to believe in after training, but before she'd be too scared! :P
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Cinski » Wed Jan 20, 2010 1:40 pm

Ceasar "sings" row row row your boat...or at least tries to. It actually comes out, "row row row row row row...etc"

I've heard that he used to whistle the Andy Griffith show tune but that was before my time and I've never heard it.

Since I got Kiwi I've been singing "You Are My Sunshine" hoping she'll learn it.
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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby windharper » Thu Jan 21, 2010 12:33 am

As I am a music educator, I would truly value if my birds would sing a song. I've done alot of searching on YouTube for singing parrots and find that in general, even the most talented birds, like Einstein (the African Grey that's been on TV) only sings ~part~ of a song ("Happy birthday to you" is about it).

I am somewhat convinced at this point that even if the melody of a song is simple, too many words make it rough, or vise versa, a simply-worded song may have too complex of a melody. I suspect we need both a simple set of easy words with a simple melody for them to be successful at it...and if it happened to be something the bird found fun to do, all the better.

As much as Tamber is a well gifted talker, he doesn't sing anything. I do whistle a lot around the house and he will try to imitate me with a single pitch here and there. Unfortunately, all he has mastered right now is a wolf call (which I did not teach him) and the slurred three-toned whistle we use to get someone's attention (the sort of "Hey, look over here whistle"). I have been trying to teach him the two descending tone whistle we would use to say "You who!"

I would really like for him to be able to do something more significant, like maybe the first line to the "Bridge Over the River Kwai"...but I suspect this might be way too much! :lol:

So far the best I've heard was an Eclectus whose owner sang opera. Knowing how much practice the owner had to be doing to have the voice she had, it was no surprise that the Eclectus could do some very nice vocables. (Vocables are non-sensical syllables singers will use for warming up.) I've also heard a similar thing from a macaw; however, the macaw was significantly off pitch and had an uncontrolled tremolo.

If anyone is successful and getting their bird to do a full song correctly, I'd be very interested to hearing about it.

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Re: Does your bird sing songs?

Postby Kathleen » Fri Mar 12, 2010 12:05 am



Pretty good!!

Just wanted to share a cute example. :P
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