Oh I feel so bad now.
Henry and family have been "bird-sitting" my budgie, Cloud, since last Monday and she was returned home to me this morning amid tears aplenty from Henry who idolises her even after these few short days.
Somehow though, Cloud has learned a few NEW phrases during her 'holiday away from home' .
Before she left her vocab was limited to "Shit", " No" and " Shut Up."
Now in a mere 6 days she calls out "Henry," "Dougal" the name of their dog and is able to whistle about the first two bars of 3 of Henry's favourite tunes.
To cheer Henry up as best I could I PROMISED him that ANY time I need to go away or go into hospital ever again HE will be Chief Budgie Sitter.
As a teen my family were going camping with some other families for some reason my brother and I did not got.
I was budgie sitting one of the families budgie (they had three young girls) this budgie could already talk.
So my brother and his friends tried to teach it to swear. I spent the weekend talking to the budgie and taking him everywhere with me, even on my bike to go and visit a friend. Just to make sure he didn't.
Once they have learnt to mimic they pick up new words/sounds quickly.
You're not joking, Cloud seems to becoming quite a proficient "copy-cat" since I was woken up with what, at first, I thought was the sound of my 'land-line' ( I programmed it to play a specific and distinctive piece of music knows as the "Baby Elephant Walk", then it stopped and re-started, I managed to climb out of bed only to find that it was Cloud making the sound, presumably because the light material cover had somehow slipped off of her copious and well 'furnished' cage