|
This is really interesting and I think you are on to something.
Our first talking bird was a grey that spent her first 5 years with a couple who had a dog and eventually a baby, which led to rehoming her (for various reasons). She was a tremendous talker. The first day she arrived at my house she said "put on your shoes and we'll go outside". She rang the phone, answered it (using the man's name that she had lived with) and had a long, one-sided conversations that consisted mostly of "yep, nope, uh-huh, yeah, okay". Her previous owner had worked from home a lot and spent time on the phone going over job assignments. Much of her speaking consisted of her asking questions, such as "want some watermellon?", "you like yogurt?" , "you want your breakfast?", plus all the "what does a dog (chicken, monkey, cow pig) say" phrases. When there was a siren on the television, she would yell, "Misty, stop that!". I learned that the previous owner's dog's name was Misty and whenever a siren was heard near their house, Misty would howl.
Over the years she lived with us, she added to her vocabulary some, much of it things she overheard, rather than things said directly to her, now that I think about it. She also was a great foley artist and imitated all phones, microwaves, doorbells, burps, farts, sighs, coughs, sneezes she heard on a regular basis.
We now have a male eclectus that talks, although not nearly as much as Maui, described above. He loves the doggy in the window song and barks when I sing it, at the right point in the song. He can sing "how much is..." but gets so excited to bark at the right point that he messes up. Actually, he adds barking to almost any song we sing. If our female eclectus starts screaming, he'll say "stop that", and often says "look at that" or "look at that, birdie". He calls the dog, and loudly, sternly says "Mae, come HERE!" Once in a while he'll say, "don't bite". So, although my husband and I carry on normal conversations around him, he doesn't pick up on mundane stuff, but instead goes for either the rowdy or excited phrases he hears, as well as the stern reprimands to the dogs.
I'll be interested to hear more on this subject!
|