Bucky's Serenade

Bucky the cockatiel whistles an up-beat tune. In one clip, he dances to his own song. The intended audience is cage-mate, Chulo, who plays with a toy in the first clip and dines happily in the second.

I'm guessing this is Bucky's version of the "Friendship Song" Chulo whistles in the COCKATIEL SONG AND DANCE TEAM video. Both are happy, rhythmic pieces in Major keys; they inspire a similar dance; and they seem to be social or "courtship" songs of some type.

Bucky's tuning wavers and his tonal center shifts (the first clip starts in B-flat), but in both performances he ends in roughly the same key, settling in around A-flat Major both times (Chulo's song is in B-flat).

Bucky's music, like Chulo's, involves repetition and inflection of skeleton melodies. The phrases get quite regular and rhythmic at times, and there is a happy, friendly overall feeling - so I call this song an Allegro.

Despite similarities to Chulo's song, this is Bucky's musical voice. Besides whistling in a distinct key, he invents or chooses different themes and puts them together differently than Chulo does. And he has a unique way of spinning out an embellished line.

In Bucky's song, especially in the first clip, the wolf whistle is woven in very creatively. It's used as a theme or motive, inflected various ways to construct melodies; but it also serves as a boisterous refrain, punctuating a series of short, melodic episodes. Usually at each refrain, the wolf whistle is repeated 2-4 times. After about 1:20 the song shifts mood into something harder and more urgent - this is probably a transition into a new song.

In the second clip (which starts around 1:34), Bucky's whistling moves into a semi-cadence, which he extends from about 1:47 to 1:53. At 1:54 he launches into an assertive, rhythmic section with an obvious skeleton melody. He riffs over this same short melody (or tries to) with various embellishments for two and a half repetitions, but at the end of the third, starting around 2:17, he hovers on the penultimate "chord" (in effect, over the dominant or V chord) and strings this out, riffing over it 7 times, repeating and varying his melodic embellishments, before falling back half-heartedly into the tonic (A-flat) at 2:35.

We did not teach Bucky any of this music. Where he originally learned its musical elements seems less important than what he does with them now, which must be considered his own creation - whether you call it an "improvisation" or something else.

Note: Paco (blue-crowned conure, off-screen) calls out to his flock-mate at 0:07.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• whistling
• singing
• cockatiel
• dancing cockatiel
• whistle dance
• sing
• bird

[iluvjsjsjs]

Bucky is awesome

[BIGBOARUFF]

so freakin sweet. i wish the place i volunteered at's conures danced and sang like this.

[cyik]

He is so cute!