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Name: Brenda
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2003
Biographical Information:
My mother found my first parakeet in the snow outside the Art Department where she taught on the Campus of the University of Central Oklahoma. I was seven and Pretty Boy lived many happy years. Now I am 57 and have more than 250 Parrots of many species, Green Cheeks-- 50 plus babies, Quakers, normal and blue, Senegals, Meyers, Lories, Blue Crowns--formerly Conures now recognized as Macaws, which I have said for the last 30 years, Blue and Gold Macaws, Double Yellowheads and 21 African Grays. I have hand-raised all of those species and many more--down to the tiny little Goldie's lories--all talk!
Do Green Cheeked (Pyrrhura Species) Conures Talk?
Once-and-for-all— They most certainly do!
Green Cheeks talk so well I have for years called them the Poor-Man’s-African-Gray. They do not have perfect pitch like a Gray, but what they say in their own little squeaky voices is just as smart as a Gray.
Jamie, my husband’s little Green Cheek, started talking at 8 weeks old, the same age that my Kathryn, a Congo African Gray, started talking.
Kathryn said, “Here Kitty, Kitty. Come on, Kitty. Where’s that Kitty?” Three sentences she learned from an African Ring Neck. Kathryn said it in the Ring Neck’s voice. She did it perfectly the very first time she tried, complete with the odd inflection and twitter of the Ring Neck.
Jamie said, “Jamie’s a pretty bird. Pretty Jamie!” It took several repetitions per day for about three days to get him to say it. He made no attempt to mimic my husband's voice, but said the words quite distinctly in his own whispery voice.
Perhaps the reason many people believe Green Cheeks don’t talk is that they miss their naturally soft voices. (Their natural jungle-talk is a very soft whistle.) They must be trained to turn the volume up.
The way to do this is to wait until they initiate a conversation on their own. You may be passing the cage one day and your baby bird might say, “Turn the TV back on!”
Rather than invalidating yourself by attributing what you just heard to wishful thinking, suspend your disbelief and turn immediately back to the cage and say in a very loud voice. “Did you say, 'Turn the TV back on?'" Then go and do it.
Once your Green Cheek knows you understand her when she talks, she'll talk all the time. Yes, females do talk just as well as males! Females of most Parrot species talk just as well as males, if their person knows how to listen and adequately rewards their first efforts at talking! Parrots learn all their lives, so even older birds are capable of learning. They need to know how important it is to you, so tell them in plain language. Any language!
I always tell adoptive parents coming to me seeking a talking bird that their baby will talk according to the power of their postulate. A postulate is something a person puts up in their own mind's eye as real before it happens.
In other words, if you believe your baby or older bird will talk--it will talk!
To teach it, you must hold your baby cupped in your hands in front of your face, look him in the eye and repeat "I love you, I love you, I love you," ten times in a row, three or more times a day." Interspersed with the "I loves you," lessons give many kisses and say, looking right in the baby's eyes, "It is very important to Mama, (or Daddy) that you talk to me! I want to know what you are thinking!"
It is also helpful if you are able to mimic the bird's jungle-talk sounds. That is a high pitched pee-o--pee-o for the Green Cheek. My husband has the knack of turning that jungle talk sound into "pretty baby!" I have seen him get a Green Cheek baby of exactly the right age to say "pretty baby" in about five minutes.
(The best age for Grays and Green Cheeks to learn first words is between six and eight weeks old. Quakers usually do not talk until they are about six months. Double Yellowheads begin at about three to four months as do Macaws.
Once you break the talking barrier with any word or phrase, it is as though a light goes on in the bird's head and he thinks," I'm in a new flock now, I better learn this new language if I want to communicate with these new flock members."
The bird's cage should be placed in an area that faces the television. If you work in the day, please do not leave your bird home alone all day without the small comfort of the television. A radio will not do! The bird must see the action with the word to learn how to talk. Children's stations are good. Many of my birds recognize letters. Cartoon stations teach too many silly noises for me. (Never teach your parrot a word or phrase that will eventually become annoying to you, because they love repitition. "Polly wants a cracker" gets old really fast!)
Be sure the TV volume is set while you are gone a bit lower than you might use! Parrots have very keen hearing. When you see your parrot repeatedly shaking his head, it may be because you have the TV up too loud.
Rest assured that every species of bird I have ever delt with has their own unique language. Different sounds mean different words! (Some young person needs to do a study on bird language the way the Dolphin's language has been studied.)
I asked an African Grey of mine, named Nuzzles, what his click meant and he told me "No! And nothing else but no!" His idea of a joke is to do my click, then do his click and laugh like a person. The joke being that he can do my click, but I sure can't do his click.
I reported that incident at a bird demonstration I gave for a church group and a ZULU man visiting from East Africa stepped up and did Nuzzles click exactly. He said it was also a word in his language meaning, "No! Emphatically No!" Grays are common to his country. That certainly brings up the question, who originated the word, the Grey Parrot or the ZULU?
All my parrots use some form of the click to mean, "No!" Each species also has a specific sound for, "I love you!" They all have specific alarm calls, too.
Quakers have specific words for almost everything in their environment. I have witnessed hens giving instructions to their mates to go to the feeder and bring back a certain food to the nest box. If what the male brings is wrong, she will fuss him out and send him back.
Once a parrot learns to speak a human language, you will hear less and less of their own jungle talk. My Gray's and Green Cheeks speak almost entirely in English, although they are able to speak any other bird language they want to speak. Grays have perfect pitch and do it perfectly the first time. Green cheek's speak with a Green Cheek accent, in the same way that I can always recognize the accent of a person from New York.
At eight o'clock every morning my whole bird room (47 talkers) speak Outside Crow when the Crows come to the pond to drink and pick through the little bit of waste we have from the aviary. All our birds eat out of BirdMangersTM of course! The history of our invention can be traced through the very early to the late models that are in use there.
Facts about Jamie, our pet Green Cheek:
He lived in our bedroom for 5 years. He loved playing under the covers and would have slept with us had that been safe. (Birds sleeping with humans is NEVER safe! With possibly one exception. I have a friend who is divorced and lives in the country with her three children. Her Blue and Gold Macaw sleeps clutching the side of her bed. Max is a Watch Bird and pity on an intruder coming into her house at night!)
My Goffin's Cockatoo, Winston Churchill, liked to strut around on top of the covers, but Jamie would start under at my husband's feet and work his way up to pop out in John's face saying, "Peek-a-boo, I love you."
Jamie hated Winston and would put his beak down on the sheet and wrinkle it in front of him as he approached. If Winston did not get back across the imaginary line Jamie had drawn down the center of our king sized bed, Jamie would attack him, saying, "Get out of here you Turkey Bird!"
When Jamie had to potty he ran down my husband's leg and jumped up and down on his knee. John would sit up, lift him over to his cage, clap for him when he poo-d, then bring him back to the bed.
At "Lights out" Jamie slept in a gallon green bean can turned on its side in his cage. He had a tiny pillow and blanket which he arranged quite elaborately before getting in his makeshift nest box. One night he wasn't ready to go to bed, but he went reluctantly into his can.
I was about to doze when I heard from the metal can, "Jamie's a pretty bird, Jamie's Daddy's bird, Jamie wants out!"
I said, "Dad is asleep! You get to sleep!"
He sat in his echoing chamber saying, "Poor, Jamie! Poor, Poor Jamie." Over and Over. Until I nearly fell out of the bed laughing!
One night it was storming and his brother, Pretty Baby, was hanging on the wire trying to come in the bed with us. Jamie ran in his nest box. (He had a new 10 Qt. Sterlite box hanging on the outside of the cage by that time. All our birds nest in plastic boxes. They are so much lighter and cleaner.) Every time it thundered and lightening flashed, Jamie yelled, "Pretty Baby get in this box!" We never taught him to say that. He put it together himself.
Jamie fell in love with a beautiful fallow hen, whom he courted in English, "I love you pretty girl. Lady Jane is Jamie's pretty pretty baby."
Lady Jane became egg bound on her second egg (I've never had much luck with birds bred for color variation) and the vet said laying again might kill her. I told Jamie she could not come back to him, that I would take care of her. (She was very sick and almost died.) Jamie said, "Give Lady Jane back. Jamie will feed her!"
I put her back in their box and for two weeks he fed her, with me telling him all the time that he could not keep her, that having another egg might kill her. When I took her out they both screamed and cried. They called to each other in the most pitiful voices that I soon sold Lady Jane--with the stipulation that she never be bred. Her new mother was a patent with MS who lived in a nursing home. Lady Jane rides on the woman's wheel chair and is quite a hit with patients and staff.
About a year after she was sold the woman had to go to the hospital for a short time and I kept Lady Jane while she was there. Lady Jane came in the door calling, "Jamie, Jamie, Jamie." I took her immediately to Jamie's cage where he was living with a younger Jane.
Jamie came out of his cage and I put them side by side on the table. Jamie attacked Lady Jane and I had to separate them. He went muttering back to his own cage with Lady Jane calling "Jamie, Jamie, Jamie!" It broke my heart!
How unique are we humans? I think not very! Birds know love and feel loss. I could recount hundreds of case histories to prove the point.
The first clutch of babies Jamie had, he ate the first baby and chewed the toes off the second before I caught him. His Daddy wanted to blame poor Jane, but Jamie was the one with blood all over his neck. I took their remaining three eggs and put them under another hen. Then I went back and told Jamie how ashamed I was of him. That he was supposed to feed those little babies and take care of them the way he had taken care of Lady Jane.
The next time Jane laid eggs I asked Jamie, "Shall I take your eggs and give them away?"
"No! Jamie will be good!" He told me, and he was. When his first egg hatched he came out and told my husband, "Jamie's pretty baby!"
Jamie and Jane are the parents of nearly fifty babies now. At present I'm raising a clutch of his that are just putting on feathers. They are all trying to talk!
Other babies from other Green Cheek pairs talk just as easily. I have noticed that babies from two talking parents will talk younger. That has to mean that learning language starts very early, perhaps when they are still inside the egg, because I pull them from the nest as soon as their eyes peep open. (At about two weeks.)
There are so many unanswered questions about bird languages and the way they learn that I can only hope my observations (I intend to write a book soon) will inspire a young person to take up the study for a doctorial thesis and make it their life's work.
Good Luck with teaching your Green Cheek to talk. Remember it is all based on the Power of Your Postulate!
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