Sunny's beautiful. I once tried out a bass player and went to his house to play with him. I couldn't concentrate at all because his bird was really loud. While I think birds are wonderful and likely make great companions, I just don't have the patience for the squawking. My dogs bark a bit and even that tends to gnaw at my nerves. I like quiet.
Birds are not for the quiet, that's for sure. Sunny is LOUD and she drives my youngest son, 15, absolutely crazy some days. My African Grey, Ramses, is quiet most of the time. He only makes "cool" sounds - he knows about 200 words and phrases that he uses in context. And he will whistle and sing if I have Folk Alley playing up loud. He's partial to Johnny Cash. And who isn't, right?!
Do birds, like people, vary in how quiet or loud they are or is more about which type of bird you have African Grey etc...?
Different species of birds have different qualities, including things like types of sounds and levels of sound loudness. Conures - like beautiful Sunny - are terribly loud! They really are obnoxious, to be honest. Sunny can drive any sane person mad at times. Sunny doesn't sing like a canary, she squawks. It's not a pretty sound, and it's LOUD! Ack! I can quiet her by putting her in her cage and covering the cage with a blanket. She actually loves that and settles down. Sometimes it must be done. African Greys are completely different. They are stealthy, quiet, brilliant. They have the cognitive abilities of a six year old human child! Ramses can count, can ask for his favorite foods. He calls me by name. It's unnerving for those who don't realize a bird can do these things. These birds won't - and never - squawk. They will whistle beautiful tunes (well, the theme to Andy Griffith is our "flock song" and we all whistle it), they will use real human language, and they can mimic ANYTHING including the doorbell, my cell phone (a favorite, because I run for the phone and then realize it's the bird). They sound EXACTLY like what they mimic. It really is incredible. African Greys won't speak or whistle or make ANY noise if they don't know you. They just perch and stare. They only make noise in the presence of those they trust.
African grewys sound wonderful. How is it you became a bird enthusiast/pet owner? Who introduced you to this?
Even though I was given the name of a flying creature at birth, I didn't take up the care and feeding of parrots until ten years ago, when my son, who will be 18 in just 5 days, was in the second grade. He wrote a report on African Grey parrots for school and fell in love with them. My son has always been an old man - here's a funny story about him cooking on the car engine: http://myfairladyproject.com/my-fair-lady-project-blog/2012/... At 17, my son, Louis, stands 6 foot 7 inches tall, but back in the third grade his need to understand shot to seven feet, to the seven books I would see him stuff in his backpack “just in case” the teacher assigned silent reading time. His classmates copied paragraphs from the Word Book encyclopedia for their science report on African Greys, describing the birds’ natural habitat, but Louis dove deep, buried his brain in scientific paper and philosophical discourse. He typed a young naturalist’s volume and accompanied it with a roll-out hand-painted poster of the African Grey and His Family, perched on some Congo tree, enigmatic, ready to swoop into the hot dry air. Every trip to the Petco for dog food, Louis dragged me to the bird room to chat with a handsome grey fellow in a teeny corner cage. Fastened to the cage with a piece of dirty transparent tape was an index card with a hand-lettered warning in sharp, black Sharpie: I bite! “Please please please please please please please Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooom can’t we take him hooooooooommmmeeee??????” “Honey, look at the price tag. This bird costs one thousand, three hundred dollars. Plus, he bites,” I’d sigh. “Someone will come along and give him a nice home.” But no one did. Month after month passed and the grey bird’s price dropped to eight hundred dollars, then six, then four. My kid continued to harass me, citing examples of exemplary greys and their owners. “Mom, African Grey parrots have the cognitive abilities of five-year-old child. They can learn to speak, in context, over two-thousand words. You can potty train them! King Louis the Fourteenth had an African Grey, and MY name is Louis. Besides, some scientists even think they’re psychic.” The parrot would stare us down with one steel eye, with feathers rough and broken from constant caged boredom. We would stand at attention, our hands safely behind our backs, and intone the phrases man has uttered all these parrot-loving years. Pretty bird. Pretty bird. Polly wanna cracker? As we turned to leave the bird room the bird would catcall the wolf whistle, turn his lonely face to the cement-brick wall. It broke Louis’ heart. One night I ran to the pet store alone, but made my way to the bird room out of habit. The parrot perched in the far corner of his cage, preening his three remaining red tail feathers. The tattered index card was missing and the price tag was gone. I figured someone finally bought him and was preparing to take him home. At the checkout I made small talk with the clerk. “So hey! That African Grey finally found a home, eh?” She scanned my twenty-five pounds of kibble. She spoke to the register as if I didn’t exist. “No, he has behavioral problems. The manager decided to euthanize him. They’re going to put him in the freezer when we close up.” So the biting bird became a part of the family zoo that night. Louis named him Ramses, after the Egyptian pharaoh. I bought a huge cage on clearance and built a fake tree out of manzanita branches for him to perch on during the day. “Ramses,” I told him, as he shivered in fright and confusion, the new cage a silver monster in his five-year-old-child’s mind, “I know you only bite people because you were stuck in a tiny cage for two years. I won’t ever close your cage. Just take your time.” It took over a year of patience, of time, of allowing Ramses to bite me until he realized I would never, ever react with anything but love. Today he follows me around the house, chit-chatting, repeating his name over and over and imitating our nasal-voiced mailman. He’s pathologically attached to me and tolerates the rest of the brood. Of course, Louis tells everyone he knows that he - personally and singularly - owns an African Grey.
Ramses is doing great! Right this moment, he's going through a difficult molt. It happens every few years. So, he's a bit grumpy. But he loves me more than anything, and we have so much fun together. His latest phrase is "Hey, sexy!" (said in my voice) Where he picked THAT up, I've no idea! But it makes all of us laugh and laugh, so he says it often.
Great story, glad that you guys found each other. Having a friend that can mimic your voice must be an unusual thing, especially when it's a bird with the smarts of a 5 year old. I imagine it makes for some comedy.
Ramses has a joke that he tells! He made it up himself! This is how it goes: "Bird. Bird bird bird bird bird birrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!" and then he laughs, hysterically, as if that's the funnies thing on the planet! It always cracks me up. What is he thinking?!