Budgies certainly are capable of learning to mimic sounds and words. However, not all budgies will learn to “talk”. A budgie is more likely, but not guaranteed, to learn to mimic sounds and words if:

-Your budgie is a male
-Your budgie is hand reared or extremely tame.

The key to teaching your budgie to say words or even phrases is to repeat often. The best learning opportunity is when your budgie is out of the cage with you and in the mood to hang out on your finger or shoulder. You will want to get up close to his face and repeat the word or phrase you want to teach him. You will know your lessons are being especially effective if your budgie looks like he’s focusing on your mouth and/or his pupils are dilating. Some budgies will even like to put their face right up to your mouth when you talk. Once your budgie picks up a word or two, it is likely that teaching him words and phrases will get easier.

Some budgies may only learn to mumble, some will learn a few words or sounds, some can have an amazing repertoire, but most will not learn to talk. This is not a reflection of a budgie’s intelligence (budgies are surprisingly intelligent), but rather is a reflection of each budgies individual talents and propensities. Don’t be disappointed if your budgie doesn’t learn to talk, for he has many more valuable qualities to offer, such as his companionship, cheeriness, and funny antics, to name just a few!

My talking budgie “Monkey” is a male budgie who lives with his female companion, and just loves to talk all day. Some people suggest you should only have one budgie and it should be a male if you want it to talk. I disagree with some of that. Yes, males are the better talkers, I will give them that, but females can talk as well. It is not an important factor however that you should only keep one bird.

As I have said in the section (Companionship) that I do not recommend keeping any budgie on their own for health reasons. My male budgie is a super talker but his female companion doesn’t utter a word, however if I separated them the male would become depressed and would not talk. To have your budgie talking, he must be happy, and in most cases to be happy he must have a companion.