Birds are dumb?

Do you think birds are stupid? I do not think so. In fact, the smartest parrot in the world named Alex had the abilities of a five-year-old human. He knew 150 words, he could distinguish between many shapes and colors, and he could count numbers. It is obvious that parrots are good at speaking. But Alex was not just mimicking, he understood the concepts. He could communicate with humans. Unfortunately, he died about four years ago. His last words were " You be good. I love you" It made me cry, but the stories of Alex made me feel happy.

If you are interested in Alex, there are many  . Or you could read the book "Alex & Me" which was a bestseller in 2009. I read through the book and I was really impressed with Alex and the scientist.

I have a cockatiel as a pet. He is not as smart as Alex the parrot, but my bird is also called Alex. Actually, I named it after the smartest parrot. Alex is so cute and friendly to me. But he cannot speak any words and sing songs, even though I am teaching him as hard as I can. I thought he was stupid.

Someday, I found out that he loves peanuts. When I was eating them, he came to get one and eat it. Within a few days, he remembered the sound of the container of peanuts being opened. Whenever I open it, he comes to me immediately. I put a peanut on the red lid every time. He picks up it from the lid. He identifies the sound！

The other day, I bought peanuts in the same container except it has a green lid. He listened the sound of the container opening, and he came to me as usual. But I put a peanut on the green lid, he suddenly froze in his tracks. He looked at me and climbed on my shoulder. He seemed to tell me “ It’s a different color”. So I put the peanut on the red lid again, and then he got off my shoulder and ran directly to the peanut on the red lid. Great, Alex, you can identify colors!

I think that he has more potential that I still have not found yet. I want to find it. He might be smarter than I thought. Anyway, Alex is so cute. Here is a picture of him.

Volunteer at a Bird Center

I think volunteer work is more common in the US than Japan. There are many opportunities and people are willing to work as volunteers here, in the US. That is great! 


So I also started volunteer. Since I like wildlife, I work at a bird center as a volunteer. At the center, we take care of wild birds that are injured or orphaned. I go to the center every week and I feed baby birds and clean cages. We have to feed them every 30 minutes! They are noisy but so cute. They are waiting for food with their mouths open. There are many kinds of birds including sparrows, finches, doves, blue jays, robins and geese. All those birds are brought by kind people who found a bird that cannot survive in the wild. There are about 100 birds at the center at a time, and a few hundreds birds during a entire summer season. After we take care of the birds and they become big and healthy, they are released into the wild again. That is happy and sad moment.

I like this work.