The parrot who asked what colour he was

A grey parrot once looked in a mirror and asked a question nobody had taught him: what colour am I?

His name was Alex, bought from a pet shop in the late 1970s by the scientist Irene Pepperberg. At the time, most researchers assumed birds could only mimic. Pepperberg spent three decades proving otherwise, in plain daylight, one word at a time.

Alex learned to label dozens of objects, seven colours and a handful of shapes. He could be shown a tray of mixed things and answer which one was green and three-cornered. He understood same and different as ideas, not just as sounds. He counted small quantities. He grasped the concept of nothing — of a category being empty — which is not a trivial thing for any mind.

And when he caught his reflection and asked about his own colour, he was told: grey. He kept the word.

Alex died in 2007. His last words to Pepperberg were the ones he said every night: you be good, I love you.

Why it matters on a Tuesday morning in your living room: the bird on your perch is running something close to that same hardware. A parrot, cockatiel or budgie left with a mirror and a seed bowl is a brilliant animal with nothing to do — and boredom in birds shows up as screaming, plucking and apathy.

So make him work a little. Hide food in paper twists. Name things as you hand them over. Teach a step, then a new one.

Not tricks. Conversation.

If your bird starts plucking or goes quiet and still, that is a veterinary matter — see a vet experienced with birds