Swearing birds

A few days ago, whilst shopping in a pet store, another customer approached me after watching me browse through the bird section.

The customer asked me what sort of bird I have and we ended up having a brief conversation about our pets. He told me he had an alexandrine parakeet, I told him how beautiful I thought alexandrines are and then asked him if he'd managed to train it to talk...The guy laughed and then made a list of swear words he'd trained his bird to say. I wasn't amused!


I know birds are very smart and can easily pick up on household noises and can often be taught words by accident, but why train your bird to swear? I don't find it funny, and I'm pretty sure once the novelty of a swearing bird has worn off the owners regret it too. What if something happened to you and your bird had to be re homed and other people don't want to take in a swearing bird?

Does anyone else agree that a swearing bird isn't a nice or funny thing?

For those wonderful people who have rescued birds that have learned to swear before they were in your care, do you mange to discourage swearing?

It's a shame that a swearing bird can be very off putting due to no fault of it's own

I whole-heartedly agree with you. None of mine are adopted, my oldest is my 13 year old yellow nape Amazon, all of my babies speak, and none swear. The worst I've ever heard out of my Macaw's beak was "sh..", and my jaw dropped. I didn't "teach" it to him, but I'm sure he's heard me slip and say it, along with my adult sons and husband. I was SO ashamed when I heard him say it, and absolutely ignored him. He hasn't said it but a few times, and hopefully he'll forget about that word one day.

When we have company, I always make sure and tell them to please watch their language. There's nothing cool or funny about a swearing bird, in my opinion. There are SO many words in the dictionary, why anyone would even attempt to teach a bird to say the ugly ones is beyond me.

I'm glad to hear you haven't encouraged your babies to swear and I think It's so cute that you ask your birds to mind their language! You sound like the perfect birdie mom!

Well my rescued MRH Amazon pair came from a Baptisit preacher. Until the vet visit Friday the Female had only said Hello Bubba, which was the preachers name, the male never speaks. When the Vet reached into the cage and asked her to step up, she scurried to the other side. So the vet reached in and grabbed her ( they have been cage bound for years ) and she looked right at the vet and said A**Hole. We were shocked, as I dont allow cursing at all. I as you all DO NOT find a cursing bird funny ! To me its like the adults who think their 3 year old cursing is funny, its just in poor taste and lack of social grace. I think curse words are for people who dont try to learn and use intelligent words to eloquently communicate.

LOL. Vets probably don't expect their patients to swear at them(at least not in English.). The closest Sunny has come to swearing was her "Loza bull, pila crap" comment when my husband was chastising her for trying to get the strings on his sweatshirt hood. As she has a big vocabulary and we are her fourth home, we feel fortunate that she doesn't swear.

Wow, that's so strange. I've heard of people training other peoples birds to swear for a joke. Have you had anyone over who would do it for a laugh?

All my birds are rescues but none of them talk. One of them is just learning to say hello

horsesculpter, the vet was quite taken aback. She is a mobile vet and knows my family well, and knows we dont converse with that type of language. It was the vets Birthday also, so she got cursed on her special day. At least Ruby and Buddy gave her lots of kisses to make up for Lola's rude comments.
Kitty, all of the friends we allow into our home know my rules about profanity. We dont allow alot of people into our home, it is our only place of privacy with one of my sons in show business. Plus we have had visitors steal precious items from our home, not monetarily precious but it was priceless to us. Our pets are treated just like my children, and its their home also and we consider that before inviting people in. If one son has a friend that doesnt get along with another son, that friend isnt invited back, they must visit in public or at that friends house. No one should feel threatened or bad in any way, or be taught bad behaviour by a visitor into their home, pets included.

I'm very glad to hear it, Boysmom!

I treat my birds as part of the family and If I caught anyone trying to teach my pets bad behaviour I wouldn't invite them back into my home either.

Horsesculpter,

You are very lucky sunny hasn't learned to swear if she has such a wide vocabulary and you're her fourth home!!

Sunny looks really lovely, how long have you had her?

I agree with all of you, I understand if someone has a rescue and the birds learned it from accident , but if you didn't rescue your bird, got it from a breeder than it disgusts me. I agree ith you Kitty, once the funny gets off it justs get plain annoying. Once, we were at a wildlife refuge, usually they only take in wild animals but a macaw was found lose. So they took it in one of the tourists thought it was funny to teach the macaw to swear, now every time they see somebody they either call them a bit$& or a a piece of $&:; . In the. Beginning it was funny, but know its gotten so out of control they are thinking of giving the bird to the rescue. It's not the birds fault that. A rude tourist taught them that.

I don't find swearing birds amusing at all any more than I would a swearing child. A few members have recently thought it would be funny or cool to post videos of this behavior on the forums and then get their feelings hurt when they get warned and their thread with the attached video gets deleted.

What planet do these people come from that think this would be OK on a family access forum. These sort of videos need to stay where they belong and that is You Tube.

Birdlover11, that's so sad! Stupid people don't realise the consequences of their actions.

There's an unwanted bird sactuary not too far from where I live and several of the parrots there were taught to swear by their previous owners. I have often seen a mother and child approch a parrot to say hello...And then watched them quickly walk away in horror after the bird has sworn at them!

It's cruel to teach a bird to swear because of the negative reactions it will get for the rest of it's life.

I have often wondered why people are so amused by Birds that swear All I can say is they must have a very strange sense of humour!

It is bad enough to hear a Human swearing, let alone a Bird!

I agree with you Mike... Keep these type of Videos to Youtube, which is where they belong!

There was a case that went to court in Warwick R.I. a few weeks ago . A woaman had trained her large parrot or too to yell using foul language at the people who lived next door who happen to be her exhusband and his new wife or girlfriend. she then kept the bird by a screen facing the house. They took her to court and she was fined 15.00 which she is now appealing. Why the ASPCA is not doing anything is beyond me. That parrot will never be able to find another home. It is discusting

I would also think a swearing bird would be harder to adopt out~ Remington's previous owner of 13 years was eager to let me know that he had no bad words in his vocabulary~

Didn't read through the replies, but your story reminds me of my tiel, Tomi Girl.

Had some "friends" who owned a chicken, multitude of cats (majority of them sick, none taken to the vet, always reproducing) and 0-4 dogs... everyone in the family are chain smokers, and it wouldn't be surprising if all or half of them are pot heads, at least one doing illegal drugs.

They knew I had and loved birds, so one would always talk about the things he'd teach a bird to say, along with getting the bird high with him. He was never serious about it, at least not to the point of intentionally going out and getting a pet bird. After all, that costs money! And that money can be better spent elsewhere, if you know what I mean...


Well, a bird ended up in their home anyway... they found a cockatiel in their yard, called "him" Tom, stuck "him" into a tiny finch cage (I don't even feel as if these cages are suitable for finches), everything was plastic, and a seed diet. Tom didn't learn to talk (older bird of unknown age), and Tom became "too noisy" so they would cover Tom's cage up to keep "him" quiet.

I gave Tom a larger cage, different food (still seeds), different perches, a couple of toys. In short, a better setup, but not ideal. I told them that Tom was a female, but they didn't believe me because of "his" bright yellow head. Well, Tom laid eggs. Tom became a "chronic egg layer". They then nearly starved Tom to death simply because they "forgot" to feed her... as they forgot to clean her cage up, or change out her water.

Cockatiels are supposed to weigh 90+ grams. She was under 60 grams in weight when I took her in.


If the general consensus is that some people shouldn't own birds, I whole-heatedly agree!

Kitty, We have had Sunny almost two years and she is a constant source of laughter. We are VERY lucky with her not swearing. The people we got her from were adamant that their children not hear any bad words. However she lived outside in a corner backyard on a school bus stop, so Sunny had a lot of company from neighborhood kids and other people passing by. We feel that is where she got her big vocabulary, but we have yet to hear anything vulgar, at least that we understood. she has had words that she would repeat that we couldn't identify and she used to throw in a little Spanish in the mix too. Pretty amazing that she doesn't swear. We don't really know much about her homes before that.