While death and taxes are widely regarded as inevitable, stress and aging are nearly as ubiquitous. We have used the budgerigar, an open-ended vocal learner, to investigate the effects of chronic stress and aging on vocal production and learning in adults. We assay vocal learning by monitoring changes in acoustic space overlap of contact calls in newly-formed flocks of unfamiliar individuals. In our stress study we contrasted these patterns between flocks subjected to minor randomized disturbances in the captive environment versus baseline controls; in our aging study we contrasted them between flocks of young versus old adults. We found that our stress protocol impacted physiological markers of stress and some measures of vocal learning, with stressed birds producing more contact calls and showing less plasticity in calls than controls. For aging, we found that older birds had lower vocal diversity (i.e. occupied less acoustic space) than younger birds. Older birds also had fewer social interactions than younger ones, and social networks based on affiliative interactions were sparser, with weaker ties, in older flocks. These results suggest that vocal learning, even in an adept open-ended learner, is not immune to the stresses of life and the ravages of time.