Older bird learning to talk?

Hi all,

With Pebbles being (we have been told 3 years old, although I don't know if I can trust the sellers information), I was wondering how likely it is that she will begin to mimick human voices?

Of cause if she never does we wont mind, but every afternoon Gizmo goes through his vocabulary, and Pebbles joins in with her vocabulary of Eclectus noises (well at least some that we heard the Eclectus Parrots at the Australian Reptile Park also do), and possibly some she has learned from other birds, but she has never uttered anything that sounds remotely like a human word.

Obviously she is learning new commands like step up, and a hand is different from a perch (you shouldn't try to peel the bark off a hand), so it might be a dumb question, but I was wondering if teaching mimicking needs to be started at an early age, and she has missed out.

We have not focused on teaching Gizmo words, we have just said things too him, so I guess the second part to my question would be, if she can still learn to mimick, do we need to adopt any training techniques to help her learn, or just continue to do what we naturally do with both of them (which is just talk to them, our dogs can't mimick either, but that doesn't stop us talking to them).

Cheers,

Cameron

I have never heard a female with a truly large vocabulary, mostly just the boys and even they can have different capabilities of course. Mine make it hard because there will be all sorts of chatter heard through their closed door, open the door and they all become church mice!

Older birds can pick up new sounds or words that they like but if she doesn't say hi or even other small words at this point I would say it may not be something she is interested in.

Hi Cameron,

Seven weeks ago we bought a 12-year-old eclectus female. We were told that she could only say "hello".

When we first got her, she was very shy and would only say 'hello' occasionally and honk. So, we were TOTALLY astounded when, after a few weeks, she suddenly said, "Hello, my darling" (we say that to her) one evening.

She also started 'mumbling', 'singing', whistling and making some VERY strange noises. The mumbling has developed into "Come on then" (now in context) and "What are you doing, huh?"; she's also brewing up some other stuff that she's still perfecting in her head!!

We are so pleased that she is experimenting with her voice and trying out new things after 12 years of just saying 'hello'. (We thought she was too old to say anything else.)

'Conditions' need to be right for her to talk (although she's getting better now that she's settling in here): i.e. she only usually talks in the evening, when she's sleepy, when there are few disturbances, and there's no-one near her or having eye contact with her.

I would definitely recommend singing to your bird(s) as our eclectus (Cherry) and budgies really enjoy music (the budgie absolutely loves his 'singing sessions' and it helped me to bond with him).

Hope this gives you some hope,

Best wishes,

Anita

I think it all comes down to if they are interested in mimicking different sounds or if they are interested in you and what you sound like. I believe that they see us as one of their flock, and if they spark an interest in you, they will try to get your attention. Mimicking us gets our attention so it works and then they see this as a way to get you to pay attention to them.