I am always enchanted when a few of us break out our instruments and start jamming in the living room and after he gets over the shock of seeing all of these shiny instruments, Cheeko sings along! He's always on key, and it blows my mind! Sometimes he starts repeating a musical phrase that we are repeating and I've actually heard him mimic the end of commercial jingles he hears on the TV. I have a recording of my boyfriend and I playing a repetitive phrase when we were trying to come up with some music for a friend's independent movie, and all of a sudden, you hear Cheeko burst out with the exact same phrase! Because I'm so curious about this, I just read a book (or rather, skimmed through it because it can be a little too philosophical for me) called Why Birds Sing; the author is a musician who jams out with birds from around the world. He prefers jamming out with the more "musical" birds, like nightingales, mockingbirds, kookaburras and lyrebirds. He plays clarinet and different flutes along with them. There was a CD that came with the book so you can hear some of his experiments jamming with birds. I would place the CD in the realm of New Age Ambient Drone, or experimental jazz, and it doesn't seem to have much joy in it, which I often find in Cheeko's songs and other birds' songs as well. Cheeko seemed a little curious about it, and listened very quietly to it, but he wasn't inspired to sing along to it. So I would say Cheeko gave it a "1 beak up." (Out of a possible two beaks.)
