One of my budgies does a lot of sneezing. It’s always sort of concerned me but at the same time I’ve always suspected it was fake.
Whenever he “sneezes” I make the noise back to him and then he sneezes again and it goes back and forth a bit till he’s done and the sneezing fit has passed.
This happened just a few minutes ago and then, about 10 minutes later, I wasn’t really thinking and made the sneezing noise again. Then he sneezed. So I did it again and sure enough, he sneezed again.
I had a cat that would fake a hairball attack when I was eating something she wanted. I would put my plate down to see where she was when she started hacking, and she would jump up on the table and try to steal my food. She had real hairball attacks just often enough that I fell for the fake ones on a regular basis. :smack:
Budgies are talented and mischevious mimics. I had one that used to nip me on the earlobe, then say “ouch!”. He also used to copy (with striking accuracy) the sound of a squeaky door hinge - so accurately that I kept re-oiling the hinge, thinking it had dried out, until I realised what was going on.
Once upon a time, my daughter stepped on my Siamese cat’s paw. Of course my daughter felt terrible about this, and told Sapphire that she was sorry, and that Sapphire was a poor abused kittycat. Sapphire evidently felt that she should always get this much attention, and would limp in front of Lisa for quite a while afterwards. She’d be walking normally, see Lisa, and then start to limp pathetically.
When I was growing up, everyone in my area referred to budgies as parakeets, and I had no idea what the UK folks were talking about when they said budgies.
Budgies are just one species of parrakeet though - they’re probably the sort most commonly kept as pets, because they’re clean, sociable, attractive and fairly simple to care for - but there are many other kinds of parrakeet.
I realise this is just a variation in regional terminology, but just wanted to expand on it. In the UK, if I tell people I have a parrakeet, they’re likely to assume I mean some sort of smallish parrot other than a budgie.
Mayme the cat also does the poor me thing. A few months ago she injured her right front paw. She’s fine now, until she gets in trouble. When I yell her name, she’ll immediately stop whatever she is doing (usually tormenting another cat), sit pretty, lift her right paw, and give me the big eyed Puss in Boots face.
I felt bad the first time she did that. Now? Not so much.
In my experience, ACTUAL bird sneezes, that is, the snot-producing ones, tend to be almost silent. Just a teeny 'choo! that’s barely audible, if that, then a wad of birdsnort hits the side of your neck or whatever.
If what a bird is doing sounds like a human sneeze it’s almost certainly an imitation of human sneezing.
Mine sniffs. In fact, I think he thinks the word for a facial tissue is snifff!. No doubt due to the association of one with the other.
I had a cockatiel that scared itself once farting. I was sitting next to it, it was on the cage and I was looking over to see if he needed a refill on his water and I heard this pffft sound and he looked back at his tail and looked startled.
He was hand raised by a friend of mine, he used to ‘wolf whistle’ at people, and liked to groom my eyelashes. I really miss him =(
I know several people whose birds can accurately reproduce the sounds of their favorite video games. It somewhat surprising to me that the birds haven’t started to imitate the noise of a toilet flushing.
