The squawk alarm: Escaped parrot rattles mother by hiding in garden and mimicking beeping smoke detector

A householder got in to a flap when what she thought was smoke alarm going off constantly turned out to be an escaped parrot mimicking the sound in her garden.

Mischievous: Sammi, the African Grey parrot whose imitation of a smoke alarm, positioned beside her, is uncanny.

Puzzled mother Shanna Sexton spent days thinking her smoke alarm was on the blink only to find the din was being made by the potty parrot mimicking the gadget in her back garden.

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Cockatoos tackle apples

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos also like tasty grubs. Image by Marj KibbyOver recent year Ballarat has had more and more visits by black cockatoos.

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Corella cull shot down

Sitting duck... a corella perches in a tree in Maylands. Picture: Dominique Menegaldo

BAYSWATER City council has opposed the shooting of corellas at Maylands Foreshore Reserve.

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Parrots tend to be 'left-handed'

All of the sulphur-crested cockatoos studied by the researchers were left-handed (Source: Eddy Knopper/stock.xchng)Parrots, like humans, choose to use one side of their body more than the other, with more of them left-handed - or, more precisely, left-footed than anything else.

Some species even try out both before deciding on one side.

Australian researchers found that virtually all the parrots they studied prefer to use either their left eye and left foot, or right eye and right foot.

"Basically, you get this very close relationship with the eye that they use to view the object and then the hand that they use to grasp it, and it's very consistent across all the species except a couple," says Dr Culum Brown, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, who led the study.

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NH Fish and Game says Nashua woman’s parrots are illegal

photo by Bob Hammerstrom Suzanne Burke and her three-year-old daughter, Lauren stand inside the bird room of their Nashua home Monday, January 31, 2011. Around them are Quaker Parrots in cages. Also known as "Monk Parakeets," the birds can adapt to cold weather if released into the wild. The state is threatening to seize the birds, which are illegal in New Hampshire. For 23 years, it has been illegal in New Hampshire to own a small, chatty bird known as the Quaker parrot because of concerns that they’ll establish themselves in the wild. And yet for all that time, these same birds have been sold openly in stores that are regularly inspected by the state.

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