Different parrot species can live in radically different contexts in the wild. We can find them in huge flocks of thousands of individuals in the vast, dry australian outback and in small family groups in the dense south american rain forest. Parrots have different diets, different social dynamics, different mating strategies and are subjected to different threats. So while parrots do show a lot of variability in their behavior even within a species, their evolutionary history definitely influences their behavioral tendencies. It is beyond the scope of this resource provide more detailed information about the behavior of all the almost 400 different parrot species, but I want this to serve as a reminder that being familiar with the natural history of the species you are working with is very important for many reasons; interpreting their behavior being one.

As an example, let's look at talking and mimicking.
There are a myriad of studies on how song birds learn their songs. Some species seem to be more or less hatched with knowledge on what a "good song" is for that species, and they can produce it even without ever listening to a member of their own species. Others need to hear adult birds sing in order to learn and practice - if they don't they tend to produce a weird, gibberish version of "proper" song for that species. In other words, the same kind of behavior can have very different genetic components and be aquired in different ways in different species.

Let's look at parakeets (or budgies, Melopsittacus undulatus) and african greys as examples. They have very different social structures in the wild, and tend to learn- and use their mimicking abilities differently. Any pet parakeet enthusiast will tell you that if you want a bird that talks, you need to get a male, and this is supported by studies on vocal learning in budgies. (Please note: talking ability on it's own should never be the basis for taking on the care of a parrot, and as a general rule parrots should not be kept alone.) This is at least partially because male parakeets "talk" or produce their learned sounds mostly in the context of courtship.

In contrast, we don't tend to see any major sex differences in mimicking in African greys and many other species. They often start picking up new sounds well before they are sexually mature, and they don't seem to use these sounds for courtship or reproductive purposes. People living or working with grey parrots can often attest to their ability to use certain sounds in more often in a certain context, and research supports this. My female will often preceed me by saying "sorry, what did you say?" when I am on the phone and didn't quite catch what the other person was saying; most likely picking up on body language cues I'm not even aware of making. I will hear "byyye!" when I start putting my shoes on, and when I am in the kitchen I will often hear the sounds my microwave oven makes, well before I've started using it.

Aside from a few species-typical sounds like begging and alarm calls, most parrots species seem to hatch out of the egg almost as blank slates when it comes to vocal abilities. This means that most of their vocal repertoir is learned, but species specific genetic differences lay down the foundation for what types of sounds they learn and when, why and how they use them. Vocal learning in parrots is a fascinating subject to me exactly because of the fact that there appears to be very different mechanisms and functions at play in different species; from the duetting of amazon parrot pairs to the "nicknames" parrotlets use to call each other. So even when there is a lot of learning involved, as definitely is the case in mimicking - when and what you learn and in which context you repeat what you learn definitely seems to have highly genetic components.

This is just one example out of many of how the natural history of a species can help provide us with a larger context - the bigger picture - for our interpretations of parrot behavior.