How to tell a male from female Budgie
So the chain pet store (Petsmart) in the western suburb said "it's the day out of its nest" - and it was also my birthday, turning 14.
So a perfect combination. I immediately built an open one-floor Lego house since my bird couldn't fly yet. Louie actually enjoyed hopping around that house as small as it was. Louie hugged my heart on my chest for warmth like a baby coddling (and going through the "babbling phase") as I pet it and then it hopped around its lego house. We bonded as we both matured together.
For its cage I custom built a beautiful circular stand - with 4 long 1 x 1" posts (square) connecting 4 circles - so the wood stand was maybe four feet high and Louie's bird cage then sat in the corner of the room. Later this cage was bought by someone at our garage moving sale (I was away at college at the time). My first parakeet was erroneously placed on the sunbay window where it soon caught a cold (after a couple weeks perishing) - from the cold air by the window. This time I had learned my lesson (or so I thought).
Louie also had a pet penguin that Louie later turned into his love partner - trying to mate with it. But at first Louie had to learn how to fly and sing. Louie then liked to sit on our music book pages on top of the Steinway grand - singing along as it also bent over to take a slice of paper to eat. Our music book pages were lined with perfect half-circles from Louie eating the paper as he sung along to the music.
Louie also took showers with me - sitting on my shoulder but I made sure to keep him out of the main line of water. One favorite game for me was to lie on my bed and call Louie who then would fly out of his cage and up the stairs - a 180 degree turn at a bay window and then another 90 degree turn at the 2nd floor hallway. I could hear his wings loudly fluttering as he finally landed on my shoulder to play with me.
In my pubescence Louie enjoyed cleanly plucking off my zits and then he ate them - kind of creepy but also very convenient for me.
Pubescence pimples, or teenage acne, are a
common skin condition caused by increased androgen hormones during
puberty, which stimulate sebaceous glands to produce excess oil.
I brought over a soccer friend - I was considered the 2nd best soccer player in 8th grade and he was the first best. Soccer was a big deal at our school since our private high school routinely won state. He realized my bond friendship with Louie was way more important to me than soccer. That was my last year playing soccer. After that I went deep into music just as Louie had learned my music then I wanted to learn the secret of music beyond just human music.
Louie would say "Where's Peter?" - Peter being the name of his plastic penguin on wheels - that Louie was quite openly physical with. Louie also enjoyed entertaining my mom as she cooked dinner - he was given a bowl of water on the counter and he would play in the water. The kitchen would be warm from the oven and he enjoyed being with my mom. My mom said Louie preferred flying up the back stairs - the spiral staircase that had been the "servant's stairs" - he liked that challenge.
There was only one time when I returned from school and I put my hand in the cage for Louie to hop on - he hopped over on his perch, bent over and promptly bit me. That was the only time he ever bit me and I realized he must have been holding a grudge against me for some reason. I have no idea what I did to anger him - but after he bit me then he was fine emotionally with me. He just needed to get that anger out of his system but I'll never know what happened to cause the anger.
What else? Louie had a lot of fun pestering my dad since my dad would return from work to sit in "his chair" next to Louie's cage and bird stand. Louie liked to peck at my dad's watch while Louie also pulled my dad's arm hairs. My dad never got real mad about this but did tell Louie to stop. My dad never left his chair - he kept doing his usual post-work routine of reading mail and journals and having his cocktail.
One time my dad returned from the detached garage - it was winter out but Louie had been secretly stashed on my dad's shoulder! My dad was in his car and turned to leave the garage - realizing Louie was riding on my dad's shoulder! Louie had wondered where dad went every morning! Amazingly Louie stayed on dad's shoulder for the cold walk into the garage and the cold walk back into the house - across the driveway.
Another amazing interaction happened with my mom. Mom was in the kitchen and Louie flew in and he flew back and forth. Mom realized Louie wanted her to follow him. So they went up the spiral staircase together - the backstairs from the kitchen up to the 2nd floor hallway and down to my parent's bedroom. There was another bird that had somehow gotten into the house. Louie refused to go into the bedroom - he stopped at the door.
"Just the way he looked and everything, I knew he wanted me to go look. And sure enough there was a bird."
The bedroom door was open but Louie would not fly into the room - and the other bird had not tried to fly anywhere else - it was confused and not happy. Mom opened the deck door and let the bird out.
One of the things I noticed about Louie is that I could tell he was smiling from the gleam in his eyes. I found that very fascinating. One day Louie was in the kitchen with my mom as she prepared dinner - as usual. He was sitting perched on the oven handle - a wall oven. I was telling my mom how I was going to bring Louie with me to college (of course first I needed to attend high school since I was still in middle school being 14 years old).
I then left the kitchen to go into the dining room but first I had to walk through the breakfast room. As I pushed open the breakfast room door I heard the familiar fluttering sound of Louie's wings and he left to follow me. Only the breakfast room door into the dining room was a swinging door! I turned around to see only Louie's beak on my side of the swinging door and the door slammed shut on his beak.
His beak was left barely hanging off his face and we rushed him to the Vet that was a few blocks away - across the street from my public elementary school. The vet said, "I could save him with surgery but he would be in a lot of pain." The Vet encouraged us to put the bird to sleep and I agreed that it was better than putting Louie through severe pain.
Louie had lived a happy and free life as far as being a pet is concerned - our house was large with two big staircases that he enjoyed navigating - and Louie was his most joyful when singing along to our Steinway grand piano playing. Louie had constant companionship and played with us as much as we played with him. He saw us as equals and we treated him as an equal as well. The only draw back was that I had to constantly pick up his droppings around the house. hahahaha.
What I learned from Louie is that animal intelligence can be just as sophisticated as human intelligence. The research of Dr. Erich Jarvis has now proven that song birds learn to sing cultural in close connection with their ability to move in body synchronization (i.e. dancing). Jarvis, a former professional dancer, emphasizes that the ability to dance is co-evolved with the ability to speak. Not just song birds but convergent evolution that Jarvis calls "the continuum hypothesis" -
A parakeet is not a songbird; it is a member of the parrot order, Psittaciformes
. The scientific order for songbirds is Passeriformes
Here is a short vid of a parakeet head-bopping in time to the music beat
So the emphasis of Dr. Erich Jarvis is that vocal learning as language is convergent evolution - he calls this the "continuum hypothesis" - since humans and birds have such a distance ancestry (300 million years ago!!) in terms of both being animals (other vocal learning species include whales, dolphins, crows, zebra finches, canaries). Dr. Erich Jarvis proved that song learning birds also use the songs for voluntary communication - it's cultural communication. Not just instinct. It's voluntary and has to be learned.
The ability to learn language by humans originated also from music learning as Professor Jerome Lewis has emphasized - and it also is closely tied to synchronized body movement. Dr. Rodolfo Llinas' classic neuroscience book - "I of the Vortex" argues that our sense of self as defined by language with left brain dominance is inherently tied to our movement cortex. Dr. Erich Jarvis proved this is also true with song birds - their language singing learning is closely tied to their body dancing ability.
Louie's last day with me proved to me that he loved me and he literally wanted to follow me. Obviously our lives were forced to part paths but our time together was magical - both in our innocence and our courage to share worlds together, emotionally and psychologically. If Louie saw himself in a mirror then he probably thought it was another bird that he was fighting - much like a male Cardinal will peck at a car side mirror. So obviously a sense of a separate ego as defined by left-brain dominant language is not crystallized in birds. Yet the singing origin of language and the bonding that music makes as emotional intelligence for learning is obviously there in song birds just as it is the foundation for knowledge in humans as primates.
Lots of these vocal-learning species of birds, they like to produce
various melodies or complex sequences of vocalizations which keep the
attention of others of their own species. Sometimes, unfortunately, it
keeps the attention of predators. This is why I think vocal learning
doesn’t evolve as often as it could, because predators are selecting
against evolution of language, so to speak. But nevertheless, I do think
it is an artistic form of expression.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/15/erich-jarvis-studies-song-bird-stuttering/
But you can’t get them to voluntarily modulate the muscles of the larynx. Only vocal-learning species can do that......
fascinating about the brains of these vocal learning species,
including us humans and these birds. We have an extra brain pathway that
controls our vocal organs and oral facial musculature for sound
production that you do not find in other mammals or other birds like
chickens.
Further, that extra brain pathway looks like it evolved out of an
existing motor pathway that controls body movement. So spoken language
is really a body movement pathway controlling the muscles of the larynx,
producing all these interesting cognitive sounds and thoughts and so
forth.
Thirdly, once these new brain pathways evolved out of surrounding
motor pathways, it created new specializations in genes that control its
connections, the interactions between cells in that brain pathway, and
how fast that brain pathway can work. Because laryngeal muscles in us
humans and syrinx muscles in birds are the fastest firing muscles in the
entire body, you need fast firing neurons to control fast firing
muscles, and this happened all similarly in birds and in humans.....
What we find is that mutations in those genes that cause speech deficits
in humans will also cause vocal learning deficits in the songbirds.
What it means is that convergent evolution also leads to convergent
health-related disorders. That means we can use these vocal learning
birds as animal models for human speech....
. Birds can regenerate neurons in their brains in places where humans
can’t. After the neural repair occurs, the stuttering is gone. So the
question is, can we figure out how the birds did that in their brain,
and then induce new neuron formation in human brains in the same way to
repair neurogenic stuttering....Vocal-learning birds can stutter, that’s right. They will stutter with brain lesions in certain areas where the lesions in humans also cause stuttering....
new talk with Erich Jarvis
