IRN speech interpreter needed - What is Skittles saying????

[willowisp71]

Hi everyone,

Not sure how many of you have read my intro and are aware of how we came to adopt Skittles, so a brief overview.....

We rescued Skittles 2 weeks ago from getting run over in a supermarket car park. He had obviously escaped sometime that day from somewhere, but we managed to capture him and secure a temporary cage for him, while we attempted to find his owner. We contacted local pet stores and vets, checked local papers, and posted adverts on Gumtree. ParrotAlert, and numerous Facebook (Bunbury) Lost and Found pages.......all to no avail (so far).

Anyway, about a week ago we finally decided to let him out of his cage (inside) so he could stretch his wings and do a bit of exploring, hoping to give him a sense of confidence with his surroundings and us also. After a quick turn around the room, Skittles landed on top of the french door, and, after a week of not making much noise at all, suddenly launched into a tirade of unintelligible dialogue and scooting along the top of the door in some sort of dance/step sequence???

I managed to get some great footage of this with my Nikon DSLR, but have been unable to get it to load up to youtube, so I took some footage today of his chattering using my iPhone, in the hopes that someone might be able to translate some of what he is saying......we're pretty sure we've heard him try to say "Pretty boy" and "Whatcha doin", and there are definately other phrases that he is trying to say which are sometimes accompanied by a particular move, (like maybe "Bow down" when he ducks his head??) but we just can't quite make it out. Unfortunately I haven't got him doing (what we call) his "shoop shoop" dance on this video, but hopefully I can work out how to convert my files from the Nikon and post later.

Anyway, here is the link to the video, would love any feedback from the rest of you on your thoughts to what he is saying.

PS: Skittles is NOT hand tame (very scared of our hands getting near him), and doe not show any recognition of the command "Step up", so it makes us wonder how the rest of his training was accomplished, or is it possible he just learnt to mimic another hand-tamed parrot without being handled himself?

http://youtu.be/DLo39NDB-NM

[MystikNZ]

sounds like: who's a pretty boy and what are you doing?

I'll post one of my birdy starting to talk maybe that might help you? I think it's a boy.. coming up a year old.

the rest of it could be skittles trying to work out what the words are, my Ash does that alot he just babbles away then will all of a sudden come out with something I can make out. the high pitch screams really get my birds attention (currently outside the lovebird & my ringneck are answering skittles back.) lol

around 3 mins the epp oop eep or something in the background is that skittles or your other birds? Sounds like it's saying something but also sounds like it's a song and the clicking after that a camera maybe?

P.S I have it at full volume and having trouble hearing

[willowisp71]

Thanks MystikNZ,

Haha, yeah my husband also suggested that 'click' might be a camera sound. The 'bird' in the background is a recording of Skittles from a previous day....we sometimes play the video back on the camera to encourage him to start talking

And yes, the sound quality isn't too good on the vid - taken with my iPhone.....at a distance.......coz he shuts up if I get too close to him!

Thanks for your input, and good luck with Ash - they have such wonderful personalities. My husband and I can sometimes watch Skittles for hours, usually with a big grin plastered on our faces!