Wednesday July 7, 2010 (evening post)

TAG is a Timneh African Grey, hence the name, "TAG." His orient is from Central Africa and these birds can live up to 50yrs old with a speaking and mental ability of a kindergartner. This means, that this breed of parrot, could pass kindergarten. These birds are able to identify colors, shapes, numbers, and being able to speak the answers back to you in complete sentences. Timneh's generally learn to talk faster than African Greys, but only because they develop faster than Congo's not because they are smarter. Tag will be coming from a breeder in SC. Tag has his own seat on Delta Airlines, and yes; I did order Tag a meal: fruit salad, which all Greys find grateful (Thank you Dr Pepperberg for that idea). Tag is still being hand-fed up to 4x a day. Tag will be ready by the end of the month and will come home to Cid and I; when we pick him up from the airport. Tag, (he/she-DNA sex hasn't been determined yet), will have special first class treatment. Tag will then be hand-fed by us twice a day for another month. My goal with TAG is to test him, like Dr. Pepperberg did. She did an experiment on Greys to find out in the first few years if their inability to language will make them lose insight in the wild, in a sense when their language does develop, they will not rely on instinct. She did an experiment, with a string that was 60cm long, with an object on the other end of the string that the bird was accustomed to such as a piece of chalk or in Alex's favorite: a walnut. This was to see if the bird would pick up the object, if it was familiar by using beak/eye/foot coordination. The bird was supposed to pull the string, bit by bit, using its beak/foot and eye coordination to get what it wanted in the end. In her findings, she found that young birds, that had little or no language, utilized this technique. Thus meaning, they wanted the object and used there beak/foot/eyes to pull the string up and get the reward. The birds that had strong language ability, would than manipulate their owners by asking for the object, rather than pulling the walnut/piece of chalk up by itself. They would do this by just asking the owner, "wal-nut?" Meaning they would just ask for the reward than work for it.
I won't bore you with all the details, as if I haven't already...lol!
Enclosed are pictures of TAG still in the lab. I am totally excited to bring TAG home, but TAG, Cid and I both have to be ready for our new environments. I will be traveling to Galloway to pick up his cage this weekend and to talk with another that has raised Greys. Cid and I can't wait for TAG to come home! Cid and I have both been busy reading books and preparing the house for TAG. Keep watching updates, for more picture and daily entrees of TAG and his learning abilities. This truly will be a long road of failure and accomplishments from day to day with TAG. We can't wait to meet you in person TAG!!!