Intelligent Bird

“I am Jackie Davis, 44, Old Road, Conisbprough,” is the announcement with which a budgerigar sometimes greets visitors to the home of his mistress, Mrs. Arthur Davis.

Jackie was born in Conisborough in the aviary kept by Mr. Norman Davis, the 21-years-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, outside their house in Old, Road. He has acquired a strong Yorkshire accent. His forte is the recitation,of nursery rhymes, but when he is retailing “Little Jack Horner” he is wont to say “Sat in t’corner” and cannot be persuaded to drop it.

When Jackie, who now has tail feathers three inches-in length and is seven ‘inches. in height, was born Mrs. Davis immediately took him into her home and determined to try her hand at teaching the bird to speak. Speaking clearly and pronouncing every syllable distinctly, she soon taught “Jackie” to say simple sentences; by the eighth week he was progressing splendidly, and when “interviewed” by the “Times” this week he interrupted, apparently annoyed by the intrusion, “Shut up and sit down, you talk too much.”

This sentence was punctuated by savage nips at the pencil point which was soon reduced to a very blunt state by his curved beak, but a movement of the pencil ‘sent, him’ scurrying for the safety of his cage. Dashing up ladders, ringing bells and .playing with his perch occupied. Jackie for some time until he peered earnestly in the mirror and remarked “That’s a pretty boy.”

Jackie whistles cheerily when the snap tins rattle on the top of the copper, and his greatest delight is to perch on the shoulders of Mr, and Mrs. Davis’s sons, Norman and Eric, as they sit down to dinner.

To visitors he will invite them to “Kiss me,” and. when asked where Grandma—Mrs. Davis’s mother—is, he replied “Gone to bed.”