Another view on birds

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Fascinating story shared from another list.http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1 & c=Article & cid=1142941149417 & call_pageid=970599119419Are birds trying to tell us things?Owner spends years deciphering budgie's `words'Research does suggest birds have cognitive abilityMar. 23, 2006. 01:00 AMELVIRA CORDILEONE STAFF REPORTERRyan Reynolds is a psittalinguist — a person who interpretsbudgie-speak. Since 1999, he has invested thousands of hours slowing down anddeconstructing recordings of his beloved budgie, Victor, who died fiveyears ago at the young age of 3, as well as other talking budgies.Victor had a vocabulary of 1,000 words, which he used in context,Reynolds says. Reynolds, founder of The Budgie Research Group, later reached out toothers with talking budgies, hoping to share information. To describetheir work, they coined the term psittalinguistics, frompsittacidae, or the parrot family.So what are budgies saying? "This is going to sound crazy, but they talk about spiritual things:God, the afterlife, a better world for them," Reynolds says.Reynolds, 50, is semi-retired from an administrative job. He's thegroup's senior translator, thanks partly to his work in radiocommunications with the Canadian Armed Forces from 1975 to 1985, whichhelped him develop his listening skills. A sensitive ear is crucialbecause budgies talk at a rate of 150 to 200 words a minute, he says. "I don't claim to be 100 per cent (accurate), but other people do hearwhat I hear. It's not my imagination," Reynolds says. "It takes a lot of skill and concentration. Budgies have a particularway of pronouncing words. It's like picking up accents."Apart from the research group, which numbers 1,000 psittalinguistcollaborators from around the world, Reynolds mounted an extensivewebsite that includes captioned recordings of budgies speaking(http://www.parrotresearch.com), and he's working on a book tentativelyentitled, The Prophecies of Parrots — the Story of Victor the Budgie. Reynolds says Victor predicted a "tsunami on the south bank of Asia" andwarned of an upcoming "super volcano." In the weeks before he died,Reynolds says Victor told him God was coming to take him away. "I don't know about predictive ability," says veterinarian PetraBurgmann of the Animal Hospital of High Park. "What frame of referencewould it have for a tsunami? But I certainly believe it's possible theyknow when they're about to die."Rupert Sheldrake, a London-based biologist, biochemist, philosopher andauthor, who trained at Cambridge and Harvard, researches unexplainedperceptiveness in animals, such as telepathy, senseof direction and premonition. He repeatedly tested N'kisi, a captive African Grey parrot who seemed torespond telepathically to the thoughts and intentions of his owner,Aimee Morgana. He wanted to find out whether the bird would use wordsmatching randomly chosen pictures Morgana was looking at in anotherroom."These findings are consistent with the hypotheses that N'kisi wasreacting telepathically to Aimee's mental activity," Sheldrake reportson his website (http://www.sheldrake.org). "The fact that these experiments statistically prove that N'kisi's useof speech is not random also give evidence of his sentience andintentional use of language."Toronto parrot owner Margaret Evered, formerly a behaviour biologist andnow a computer consultant, doesn't need science to prove that she andher female African Grey parrot have a psychic bond.Evered recounts how the bird, Plato, anticipated her return after aone-year absence — even though not even her parents, in whose care she'dleft the bird, knew when she was returning."One day she wouldn't go to bed. She just kept standing at the door,waiting. I rolled in at 2 a.m.," Evered says.She and Plato have shared a home for 21 years, from the time Plato wascaptured in the Congo when she was about 1.Evered says Plato understands what she says. She has a vocabulary ofabout 300 words, which she mixes and matches as circumstances warrant.Plato uses intonation appropriate to the circumstances. She'll ask"okay?" softly when someone is unwell. Or she'll refuse to do somethingwith a vociferous "no" as she bounces up and down.Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University inMassachusetts, has revolutionized thinking about these birds by provingthey do conceptualize — thanks to her 20-year collaboration with Alex,an African Grey parrot (http://www.alexfoundation.org). Parrot owners have to realize their pets have the cognitive ability of a5-year old, she says. Locking them up without stimulation eight to 10hours a day causes emotional damage and leads tobehavioural problems, such as screaming or feather-plucking. That's not likely to happen with one Toronto bird. Still a baby at age3, Angel, a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot, lives in a spaciousaviary equipped with a TV and a window that looks out onto Queen St. W. Her owner, Charlie Ravka, keeps her on the second and third storeysabove his store, which serves as office and occasional sleepingquarters. "She's unpredictable, hilarious," Ravka says. "I don't know what she'lldo next. But when I wake up, she says, `How are you?' And when I'm onthe couch, she sits on the back and preens my hair."The parrot is my buddy."