Towheeblog

One evening at Silver Falls I went to hear a nature talk.  It was about explorer and botanist David Douglas, entertainingly and cleverly presented by ranger Matt Palmquist.  He told of Douglas’s discoveries in the Oregon territory in the 1820s.  But the most fascinating part of the evening was one audience member:

The lady with the African Gray Parrot said her companion speaks about five hundred words, builds sentences and hold conversations.  The bird recognizes the lady’s friends and their pets by name.

The brain of the gray parrot is widely recognized as prodigious. Irene Pepperberg spend decades working with Alex and wrote a history of their work and relationship.
Here is video of Alex giving a TED talk.   Alex died in 2007 age 31.  Some grays can lived to be sixty years old.

One of the country’s most famous gray parrots now is Einstein of the Knoxville zoo.  He is over thirty years old and performs with his trainer, Stephanie White.