Jan 28 2011 A few days ago Steve Gosser posted this video of his
grandmother’s talking budgerigar. Amazingly, the bird speaks in
complete sentences. How and why do parrots learn to do this?
Birds sing using their syrinx, a fancy two-sided voicebox with
muscles that can control each side independently. This allows
the bird to sing harmony with itself, something that wood
thrushes are especially good at. Songbirds, parrots and
hummingbirds(!) learn their songs. The rest make appropriate
sounds but don’t improve upon them. Most songbirds learn during
a sweet spot of time while they’re growing up. In white-crowned
sparrows this is at 10 to 50 days old, and then they’re done.
Mockingbirds, on the other hand, learn new songs throughout
their lives. Birds learn by listening to and memorizing the
phrases and song traditions of adults in their area, though they
don’t practice them at first. After they’ve memorized the audio
template, they begin practicing out loud to match it. Studies on
the brain waves of zebra finch