It’s been a while since I blogged, and even longer since I wrote anything about my three pet birds “Precious” the Quaker parakeet (Monk Parakeet) from South America, “Sek-khia” the Indian Ringneck from, um, India, and “Frank-Frank” the Ducorps Cockatoo from the Solomon Islands. The clip below captures a moment of their lively speech earlier today (some of the background noise filtered out). All three birds contributed, although Precious usually has less to say:
Which of the following phrases can you detect in the above recording?
1. Argh! A roach! A! U Kā-Choa̍h！ 阿！有蟑螂！ (In Taiwanese)
2. How are you? Nǐ hǎo!你好！ (In Mandarin Chinese)
3. You are so cute! Nǐ hǎo kěài! 你好可愛 (this phrase taught by previous owner- Mandarin Chinese)
4. Don’t sleep! Mài khùn 不要睡 (Taiwanese)
5. “Precious” BǎoBeì 寶貝 (Mandarin)
6. I love you! (English)
7. Hello! (English)
Unfortunately, due to the annoying frequency of the first phrase above, I probably cannot ask my friends at the restaurant to take care of my birds next time I am away from home. Wish I had thought of that before I taught “Frank-Frank!” to say it!
Speaking of “Frank-Frank” the Cockatoo, here are some basic tricks (shake hands, turn around, wave goodbye) I taught him recently. He learned each one in about 10 minutes:
1 comment:
I could not decipher the talking birds but man do they talk - very clever.
And Frankie boy is a marvel, you have really trained him well. He is intelligent.
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