G'day darling! Talking birds that escaped from Australian owners teach wild cockatoos to speak
By Richard Shears
Last updated at 10:16 PM on 14th September 2011
If you’re out for a walk and a bird in a tree says to you ‘Hello there’, don’t worry, you’re not going mad.
Naturalists have reported a growing phenomenon of pet parrots that have been taught to repeat phrases by their owners before escaping from their cages and then passing on the technique to the wild flocks they join.
One scientist said that he had received numerous calls from people who were baffled to hear voices calling to them from trees in their gardens.
‘Hello there!’, ‘Hello darling!’ and ‘What’s happening?’ are among the chorus of comments that flocks of wild birds have been repeating after picking up words and sentences from other birds that were once household pets.
Naturalist Martyn Robinson said: ‘We’ve had people calling us thinking they’ve had something put into their drink because they’ve gone out to look at the flock of birds in their back yard and all the birds have been saying something like “Who’s a pretty boy, then?” ’
WHY PARROTS MIMIC
Usually, the calls of ‘wild’ parrots are far higher-pitched and much faster than the human voice.
Not every species of parrot mimics other creatures, but even in the wild, some species imitate other birds – so the idea that an ‘alien’ noise such as the human voice could spread through a parrot population may not be that far-fetched.
It is theorised that by mimicking the calls of nearby creatures, including each other, parrots have the equivalent of human ‘dialects’ – so that parrots from one area ‘know’ when they encounter parrots from another area.
This helps territorial groups of parrots to ‘identify’ outsiders who might have drifted in.
In theory, large groups of parrots could thus ‘learn’ calls from one another, and even spread the sounds of ‘human’ speech through a large population.
Mr Robinson, who is based at the Australian Museum in Sydney, said the usual sequence of events saw a caged parrot of some kind which had been taught phrases but had then made its escape.
It would then join a wild flock and chatter away in the trees, its words being learned by younger birds in the flock. The older ones would be unlikely to start learning.
When chicks are born, they hear the words being spoken by the older birds and grow up repeating the phrases. And so it continues, generation after generation.
Mr Robinson said that because of a drought in the western regions of New South Wales, flocks of wild birds – ‘speakers’ among them – have been flying to Sydney, where more food is available, and have been hanging around suburban gardens. From the tree tops in gardens, from chimney pots and lamp posts, the flocks have been talking away, leaving many people wondering if their minds were playing tricks on them.
‘These birds are very smart and very social, meaning that communication and contact is important between them,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘These flocks are showing to us that they aren’t quite as bird-brained as many people think.
‘I just hope a pet bird that’s been taught dirty words doesn’t join a flock because we don
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