How a piano player could benefit from having a parrot like our Oscar!
If you have already perused much of the website for Little & Lampert Pianos, you may have noticed that we have our own parrot, called Oscar, who lives in the back room of our shop. You can see him on a piano through watching a YouTube video accessible through a link on the relevant page of the Little & Lampert Pianos website. Watching this video could get you thinking about whether you, too, could benefit from having a parrot. We love our Oscar and so we have decided to list several reasons why a piano player could benefit from having a parrot.
Many parrots can imitate human speech
Of course, one of the best known - and most interesting - facts about parrots is that many of them can imitate human speech. African Grey parrots and some Amazon parrots are particularly renowned for being able to imitate human speech. Many people who have parrots with this ability have had much fun making use of the ability in several different ways. If you are a piano player, you can perhaps already think of several ways in which you could make use of it. Maybe you could train a parrot to greet you when you arrive at your home piano or give instructions for when you want to perform a particular musical piece on a piano in a particular way. However, this ability to mimic human speech only hints at the true scale of the intelligence of many parrots.
Don't underestimate the intelligence of parrots
Parrots are considered among the most intelligent species of birds, along with - for example - ravens, crows and magpies. Hence, a parrot could provide you with a lot of fun if you also happen to regularly play the piano. A parrot can imitate other sounds besides human speech; therefore, you might be able to succeed in having a parrot imitate the sound of you playing a piano or imitate any particular recorded piece of music that was created through piano playing. Just think of your favourite piano-driven piece of music and then imagine a parrot imitating it. The thought has probably instantly brought a big smile to your face!
Research has suggested that parrots have a high learning ability. One study by Irene Pepperberg saw an African Grey parrot called Alex trained to use words to identify objects, describe and count those objects and answer complex questions with more than 80% accuracy. Another African Grey parrot, called N'kisi, has been found to have a vocabulary of about a thousand words and be capable of inventing words and using words in context.
A crucial warning...
Though reading all of this might have you thinking that owning a parrot could be a good idea for you, we are eager to warn that there are very particular requirements for effectively looking after a parrot as a pet. It is not generally beneficial for many people to keep parrots as pets due to parrots' natural wild instincts, like screaming and chewing. Too many people buy parrots on impulse.