Budgies spend most of their day chirping, knocking toys around, and acting playfully.
So, it’s natural to assume that a budgie’s sleeping schedule is built around noise and activity. In truth, a budgie that’s exposed to too much noise at night will experience difficulty resting.
Like most parrots, budgies need relative silence to sleep peacefully at night. The environment around them should be markedly quieter than during the day.
Avoid constant talking and loud television once it’s dark to avoid disturbing your budgie’s sleep cycle.
Budgies remain half-awake and half-asleep during the night by using unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. This helps budgies to detect predators and avoid being taken off guard.
It also helps them adapt to quiet but consistent sounds so that they can sleep through moderate noise.
Do Budgies Need Silence to Sleep?
Budgies are highly adaptable creatures that can learn to sleep with some noise at night.
A quiet television or radio in a different room than your budgie’s cage is unlikely to disturb them. However, it shouldn’t be in the same room, and the volume must be kept low.
Like many other birds, budgies sleep using unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. This means that your budgie can give deep sleep to one half of its brain at a time while the other half remains awake and alert.
So, your budgie can sleep through moderate or consistent noises at night, as long as they’re not too loud or sudden. Budgies developed this mechanism to stay alert and flee from predators at night.
Due to their unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, budgies can block out any disturbing noises at night. The key is if those noises are moderate in volume and not sudden.
Avoid making your budgie sleep in this half-awake, half-resting state constantly. According to PLOS Biology, budgies require 29% REM sleep during their resting cycle.
Quieten things down so your budgie can relax and go into a deeper sleep for part of the night. Any sudden noises at night should be avoided, as this might result in night fright. This occurs when budgies wake up in a frenzy and attempt to flee from predators.
Can Budgies Sleep with Noise?
Wild budgies are exposed to ambient noises, such as animal calls, wind in the trees, and nature sounds.
However, all these sounds are far quieter than what’s experienced in the day, where minimal bird calls, chattering, and activity are present.
Let’s compare that to your home. Many owners prefer keeping their budgie’s cage in the living room to feel like it’s a part of the family.
After dark, you may have the television on or guests in the same room as your budgie. While that’s not a problem during the day, it can pose issues when it gets dark.
Conversation at a low volume should be easy for your budgie to ignore. However, sudden changes in the volume pattern can startle the budgie awake.
A bark of laughter, a raised voice when you’ve got something exciting to say, or even the sharp clack of a glass on your coffee table can be enough of a disturbance.
This is comparable to the unexpected slip-ups of a stalking predator in the night, which is often a sleeping budgie’s only warning sign.
Can Budgies Sleep with the TV on?
Your budgie can block out most television noises at night, as they’ll only be registered as white noise. This can be the sound of music, the chatter of news anchors, or the dialogue in a movie.
However, if you’re watching something loud, with sudden and dramatic swells in noise, like an action movie or a car race, that’s a problem. Your budgie may be unable to block out these sounds at night.
This will cause your budgie to become stressed out. It could mistake the television sounds for predators in the immediate area.
To avoid this, try to keep the TV volume low at night. At the least, avoid watching loud action movies during your budgie’s sleeping hours.
Perhaps the greatest issue is the blue light emitted from your TV screen. This blue light may cause your budgie to believe it’s daytime when it’s nighttime, which will likely ruin its sleep cycle.
It’s not usually the noise from a television that keeps your budgies awake at night, but the light.
Can Budgies Sleep with Music Playing?
A budgie’s sleep isn’t easily disturbed by music playing nearby.
Like many parrots, budgies enjoy listening to music, and some find it calming. The gentle sound of violins or pianos at a low volume may lull your budgie to sleep. However, this isn’t true for all kinds of music.
Loud and fast-paced music will likely disturb your budgie’s sleep, as it’ll be jarred awake by the loud noises. Certain genres are more confusing or upsetting to budgies than others.
Hard rock, hip-hop, dubstep, or heavy metal music will be a sensory and sound overload. That’s especially true for any instruments that make sharp, high-pitched noises.
However, if the music is leisurely and kept as background noise, the budgie will be able to ignore it. Budgies have adapted to register much of the constant noises they experience at night as white noise.
This adaptation helps them achieve deep sleep regardless of the natural sounds around them. As long as nothing breaks this low, even pattern, the budgie will have no reason to feel concerned.
Can Budgies Sleep with the Fan On?
While fans keep the environment cool during the hottest months but make a lot of noise.
This is especially true for small box fans but applies to your ceiling fan too. Budgies sleep best at temperatures around 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit, but they need relative quiet to rest.
Never point a fan directly at your budgie, as it’ll stress it out.
Do Budgies Sleep with Their Eyes Open?
Budgies can sleep with their eyes open. Although it’s creepy at times and makes it difficult to tell if your budgie is resting, it’s a natural behavior.
In this state, the budgie is half awake. It uses unihemispheric slow-wave sleep to keep one half of its brain alert while the other half rests.
This adaptation helps budgies evade predators in the wild since they’re less likely to be caught off guard while asleep. If only one eye is open, the budgie may still be sleeping.
If the budgie’s eyes are half-lidded, it’s growing nearer to deep sleep. Both eyes will be shut during the REM phase of sleep.
How to Help your Budgie Sleep
Since budgies are diurnal animals, they sleep after sunset and wake up at sunrise. So, their sleep cycles are inextricably linked with the amount of light in their environment.
You can help your budgie sleep by placing a blanket over its cage at night.
This will ensure the budgie has darkness, even with a TV on nearby. The fabric can also block some noise and dampen sudden bursts of sound.
However, make sure to place and remove the cotton cloth at the same time every day to ensure your budgies can adapt to a regular day and night cycle.
Like many other parrots, budgies tend to sleep standing up on a perch. You can help your budgie rest by putting enough perches in the cage, especially if you own several budgies.
Moreover, budgies prefer to sleep as high up as possible. Ensure there are enough perches toward the top of the cage for all your budgies to sleep comfortably on.
Budgies spend 10-12 hours a day sleeping. They need quiet to sleep, but they mostly need a safe and secure area to wind down.
