My tiel can't stand whistling?

[Drewcifer84]

When ever we whistle at one of our tiels he twitches his head from side to side. It's like it hurts his head and he's shaking it off. Has anyone else ever had a tiel that did this?

P.S. He suffered some physical trauma before I got him. He has a broken hip from the incident and was wondering if maybe that is what causes this.

[Akara Crystal]

What do you mean twitches. When I whistle my cockatiels moves their head to one side and listen then they try to copy.

[christie99]

There are two things this could be, it could be "recording mode" where they are trying to memorize the whistle so they can copy it later.

The other thing it could be is that the whistle is too loud or too high pitched for him. Try a lower pitch or softer whistle and see if it changes the behavior.

[tiel4me]

I HAVE seen Sunny shake his head when I whistle to him and he is on my shoulder. I think it's the higher notes.

But Sunny is also a whistler himself and he doesn't seem to have any problem when he is doing the whistling.

[erin1990]

It's probably one of those "nails on the chalkboard" things. Not insulting your whistling skills, but when you make a noise, it doesn't hurt your ears like it does someone who hears it. tiel4me said it well, it may just be a little loud or high.

Val, an african grey, does that, but screeches in a higher pitch than anyone.

[Monica]

It is said that cockatiels have sensitive hearing. If this is true or not, I don't know. I do know that it is a "common" cockatiel trait, in that many cockatiels will twitch their head when whistled to, or even spoken to. It's not necessarily "recording mode" either, as I've got a non-talking hen that twitches her head from time to time while I speak to her.