Arwen's Page

Arwen is my Timneh. He is a African Grey and his ancestors came from Africa. His hatch date is June 25, 1999, and has just started to talk.

The Latin name is Psittacus e. Timneh, and in Africa they range in southern Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and westernmost Ivory Coast.

Arwen is a larger parrot and presently he weights 320 grams and is just over 12 inches long.

African Greys are the most intelligent of all parrots, and they can have potential vocabularies of words and phrases in the hundreds. They will talk in context and understand exactly what you are saying, and understand what they say back.

There is a huge scientific research project going on about these amazing birds intelligence for the past 20 years or so, with Dr. Irene Pepperberg and Alex the Congo African Grey. Here is the link to her site, and research,,

http://www.cages.org/research/pepperberg/index.html

Arwen is a constant surprise to me,, he is so intelligent,, I can't even begin to judge just how intelligent he is. He will watch me closely when I talk to him, and a second later, will repeat a word, I said with perfect clarity. Then I usually say "WHAT???!!!" and he laughs at me with his 3 stooges laugh, that sounds like this,, "hnuucckk, hnuucckk, hnuucckk".  I know for a fact he is playing with my head!! He will say hello then I come home from work,, and it has become a regular day to day occurance. He speaks perfect, clear English, and day by day, I know he is just absorbing more and more words.

He is very steady and gentle. For a bird with such a large powerful beak he is very careful with it. This parrot, if he wanted to, could crush the bones in my finger, and probably remove the finger with little effort. He will gently beak me,, never applying any pressure, and I have come to trust him. At first, I was a bit afraid of his large beak, and worried about him biting me. But he has never hurt me, and is a very loving companion. He makes me laugh with his chattering, and wolf whistles, and I can tell, we are in for some amazing times together.

Here are some pictures of my amazing Arwen the Timneh African Grey. Click on the Thumbs to see full size images. Back button will take you back here after viewing full size images.