Baby Hood

When I was a kid I used to have the soundtrack for Disney's Robin Hood. Most of the songs featured Roger Miller whistling the melody. My dad was a whistler, and whistled that tune enough that it still reminds me of him. Not only that but it has apparently rubbed off on me and even now, decades later, I find myself whistling that tune almost on a daily basis. It seems as though I am now passing the song on to my bird.

Unlike my dad, my bird Baby isn't much of a whistler. She is more of a chirper, clucker or a screecher. In fact it is her morning ritual that she gets on her perch near the window and screeches for what seems like ages, talking to birds blocks away. After she settles down she is content to cluck away - unless I leave the room, at which point she screeches again to ask where I had gone. She rarely makes a true whistling sound though.

Today she was sitting on her perch looking out the window and from out of nowhere she whistled the first bar of the Robin Hood song. It blew my mind. She only got the first three notes right, but the rest of the notes seemed to me to be in time with the music.

I went to congratulate her awesome singing. I was hoping she'd appreciate the praise and sing some more, but instead she just flew to a lamp above my desk and started making a weird sustained gargling noise as she pecked at the lamp.

I decided to see what she'd do if she actually heard the song, so I loaded it up on YouTube. As the short introduction played she continued to gargle and peck - until Roger Miller started whistling. At this point she started listening intently. After a few seconds it seemed to me that she decided to whistle along, and she tried her best until the whistling ended on the song. Then she went back to the pecking.



We listened to the entire song and althought she wasn't whistling the melody, she was whistling loud and proud so I thought I'd give her another chance. I restarted the video and she gave me a few good notes, but then decided to leave while she was still on top.