Wombat Diet

Alex the famous talking parrot has died. Grrrlscientist (emphasis on the grrr I think) has written an obituary with a link to a cute video. Cute and also rather sad.

Something about talking birds excites people inordinately. As a boy I had a pet hooded crow and was advised endlessly that if his tongue was slit that he’d learn to talk, a superstition that galled me. He never uttered a word but his intelligence was unmistakable. He certainly wouldn’t have put up with being put in a cage and taught tricks. Mr.D

• was a drinker who once had to be escorted back to the outdoor shed he lived in. My father shared some Guinness with him after he cut the grass. He liked it a great deal and got drunk (droopy wings, closing eyes, or rather… nictitating membranes, staggering). He was not the first feathered boozer.
• worked in the garden, collecting shiny things and inspecting seed drills for insects — he had a routine worked out with my father whereby he was allowed a couple of seconds to check new drills for insects.
• liked to collect and hide coins. His favourite hiding place was concealed with tastefully arranged torn up pieces of newspaper. He got very tense if these were touched and sulked afterwards. He even went so far as to steal from the kitchen window sill, mounting Mission Impossible / Colditz style raids, going in when my mother went out with washing and escaping when she went in again.
• loved to bathe. So much so, that he would tap the kitchen window to ask for water for his tray.
• enjoyed books. His imprint is, probably to this day, on many books from my local library. I passed many summer days reading under an apple tree with him on my shoulder. Every time I turned a page he walked down my arm and stabbed the page in the top top corner. This was an odd compulsion but he couldn’t be reasoned with about this foible, only distracted (with money, e.g., or food)
• was immensely curious — pockets, once discovered, were there to be turned out — and he enjoyed mischief. He teased the dog by pulling its tail, then stole its bone if it was not too heavy, and he did this repeatedly until he tired of it. Years later I saw a crow in India get a cow away from a water pump in the same way, pulling its tail and then nipping in for a drink after the cow turned around.

Coincidentally, a boy who lived in the house some time earlier, and who later became a vet, had a pet raven that was locally famous for trying to steal the jack (the white ball) from the green of the local lawn bowling club. He only ever succeeded in rolling it off the green and causing disputes and, for new players, astonishment. For all his ablutions Mr.D was a scruffy article. No raven he. But quite a character. Very much like Ted Hughes’s “Crow,” who was to be found in the gutter eating a dropped ice cream while the rest of ornithological creation put on a flying display.

A shama belonging to a nearby doctor was the next most interesting bird I encountered as a boy. His mimicry was incredible. One could simply never tell from another room if there was someone at the door or on the phone or not. He mimicked the door bell, the sound of the long suffering doctor’s wife saying “IIIII’ll get it”, the dog barking, the door opening, closing. Or the phone ringing and then shouts for particular people. People came. Doors were opened to nobody, and presumably not opened when people stood politely, listening to the bird saying “juuuuust coming.” It must have been maddening.

At home our closest encounter with avian mimicry was our son’s cockatiel, a few years ago, imitating the training sequence of a high-speed modem making a connection. Once he learned this charming “tune” it was most often replayed as a serenade to my toes, which he worshipped with passion. It was because he wasn’t intelligent that I sometimes wished he could say a few words — some cockatiels do, after all. If brain size is anything to go by they should have a larger vocabulary than budgies.

Sparkie the Geordie budgie mastered 500 words and one called Puck mastered more 3 times as many. He was reportedly heard to say one Christmas morning

It’s Christmas. That’s what’s happening. That’s what it’s all about. I love Pucky. I love everyone.

I never encountered a talking pet mynah in the Philippines when I lived there, although wild mynahs were common. One notorious mynah was common in a different sense in a local pet shop when I was a boy. I heard one, after an exchange that would have had a Rogerian psychotherapist beaming, suggest, to a nun that she should fugoffoutadatangetemoffya. She blushed deeply. The callous bird was unmoved. Mynahs just like the sound of their own voices, and squeaky hinges and anything else that might impress another mynah. Crows are not so easily impressed, nor do they love everyone on Christmas morning.

Found on Science Blogs: A downloadable poster on plate tectonics.

Tags: Misc