Teaching a Parakeet to Whistle Tunes

User Question
I was wondering if the parakeets can be trained to whistle tunes? Or if they just do thier little chirps. Thank you.

Lisa's Answer
Parakeets are incredibly smart little birds! If you teach them that you are their flock leader, they will want to communicate with you, however it is that you communicate. So if you keep whistling short songs to them, they will figure this is your chosen method and will try to whistle them back!

The trick is for them to learn that this is an important way to talk to each other. So don't just play it in the background and turn it into 'background noise' on a tape. Go up to the cage and whistle right to them, show them that this is YOU trying to say something to them. Morning time is best to teach parakeets new things, when they are alert and awake. Make sure you whistle the same thing over and over again, make it seem interesting.

I taught my parakeets to whistle like a chickadee - which is a high "FEEEEEE" and then a lower "BEEEEEE" pair of notes. It took a number of weeks but soon they were feee-beeeing their fool heads off, and all the chickadees outside the windows were going crazy because they thought somehow that chickadees had gotten trapped in the house. I've heard stories of parakeets in pet shops learning to whistle like the cockatiels in the nearby cages, and the cockatiels got all excited because they thought more cockatiels had been brought into the store.

Parakeets are quite mischevious!

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