I grew up with a mitred conure. We got her when I was 14 and had her for 28 years. While I have seen some videos with very good talking mitreds, she never said that much, but I think she understood everything we said.
We named her Pedro, as we didn't know if she was a boy or girl. After 12 years she bore a hole in the bathroom cupboard and layed three eggs. After that the bathroom was hers, and she was defensive over it. I think she was stimulated into laying eggs because my mother hung her soft, fluffy bathroom robe on the door and let the parrot play in it.
We let her have the run of the house, and she slept on the bathroom shower curtain rod each night.
She loved to cuddle and wasn't into toys that much. We were her toys. She did have a tennis ball that she could pick up the fuzz and throw across a room. She insisted that my dad kept his hand on her back each night when he watched television. When she started getting sleepy he would tell her to go to "cluck, cluck corner" and she would fly off of the couch, and walk to the bathroom making the cutest clucky sounds all the way there.
She was very nippy and liked to chase people if she could get away with it. She would get angry if anyone sat in places that they normally didn't sit in, and each Christmas when the tree was up. I stopped holding her against my face or letting her perch on me when she did talk cause she would get so excited she would bite and draw blood. If you made funny noises that she enjoyed she would also get overly excited. She didn't mean it, she just had that kind of personality. A very bossy, but loving bird.
She would behave herself if you had spaghetti or fried eggs.
She slowed down as she got older, but always would be willing to play with you and cuddle.
She could fly anywhere, but preferred to walk. Everything was exciting for her.. open a drawer.. ooo stretched neck, eyes going, even at 28, we think she may have been about 29 or 30 when she passed away. I think she had a stroke the day before because she was walking a little oddly and died that night.
She was a very hardy gal and strong. She could pick up an entire coffee cup filled with coffee and throw it far. (She hated coffee) She was wild caught and fed on seeds, but the majority of her diet was everything from our plates. It was years ago, and we knew nothing about parrots. Throughout her life she had her feet accidently slammed in a door (perching on the top), ate an entire chocolate pudding pop and got a tummy ache; the vet thought she had arthritis when she started to pluck her feathers a little at 20 years old. We gave her medicine to her at first in jelly until she figured that out and wouldn't eat it. Later, we kept it on the table in a little juice cup for her next to her favorite fruit, pear. In the mornings she always looked a little stiff and would go immediately to that juice drink. I think she knew it helped. I also think while the feather plucking may have started with being in a little pain when she reached around to preen, it continued because my mother got very sick and couldn't allow Pedro to pearch on her feet each day, preen her hair or help her with the housework anymore. While being taken out of the wild, dealing with me going away to college, laying a clutch of eggs didn't do it, I think by the time she was in her early and mid twenties my mother being sick was just too much of a negative change for her to deal with.
She was an awesome friend, and there will never be another bird like her.