When pet birds are introduced to wild birds, the wild birds may mimic the new sounds. So when you are in a public park in Australia and you hear "Hello darling!", "What's happening?", "Good-day fat bastard" or "F... off, mate!", it may actually be a wild parrot.
A parakeet named Sparkie Williams knew 383 sentences. Puck made it to Guinness World Records, having a vocabulary of 1,728 words.
Disco scored on YouTube. His famous phrase was the impressively long: "What seems to be the problem officer? I am not a Crook, my name is Disco, I'm a Parakeet."
Mimics have evolved to have a wide repertoire of vocalisations to increase their reproductive success. The male lyrebird adorns his song with many different mimicked sounds, often the songs of other nearby birds, but can include car horns, chainsaws and barking dogs. If that doesn't help to impress the ladies, what does?
Recently a grey parrot named Griffin has outsmarted 21 Harvard students in a classic memory game. Visit www.alexfoundation.org to learn more about parrot intelligence.
Of the 400 different species of parrots, almost 100 of these are almost extinct. Bartele Gallery has many of the old birds prints for sale.
