i,too, have an African Grey named Moses. They are amazing! Go pour yourself a Scothch and he makes the glug, glug sound. I swear you cannot get much by these birds. And talk about a vocabulary, unbelieveable what they can say and at the right time. I agree with you.
Same here. Whenever I go to drink anything, the bird does the same thing - gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. And he makes a sound of me clearing my throat before I even do it. He is picking up something I'm unaware of that makes his prediction accurate. My dog also loves the bird. He hangs out under his stand and catches food the parrot drops!
I heard a story about a parrot named Moses before.
This guy was burlarizing a house when he heard a voice say "Jesus is watching you." He stopped, looked around, saw nobody, and got back to filling his sack with valuables. Then he heard the voice again: "Jesus is watching you".
He turned around, shined a flashlight and saw a bird cage. He noticed the parrot, and said "Was that you?"
The parrot responded "Jesus is watching you."
The burglar was irritated and asked the parrot "Who are you?"
The parrot replied "Moses."
The burglar said "What kind of stupid people name a bird 'Moses' anyway?"
The parrot replied "The same kind of people that name their rottweiller 'Jesus'. Sic him Jesus."
Maybe you'd better slow down on the "Scothch ." ;-)
I too have an African Grey. And yep, he imitates Scotch being poured over ice perfectly. .....as well as car alarms, microwave oven beeps, telephone and fax rings, burps (and other bodily noises), creaking doors, cats meowing, dogs barking. ....the list is long. (He also has a vocabulary of well over 100 words). A pain in the ass, but endlessly amusing.
We have a lot of African Grey "slaves" on FR!
:-)
Less to do with the intelligence of the parrot than the lack of intelligence manifest in what passes as normal human conversation.