Update July 24, 2003
For the past year or so, my research has been at some what of a stand still. I fund everything myself and I also have a family to support. Because of the lack of funding and since I started this research, I have had to make significant changes in my life. I have sold my house and depleted my savings. My standard of living has decreased considerably and it may take me a few years to get back on my feet. Fortunately, I have started a full time job about a year ago and just recently bought another house which is a fixer upper. So until further notice or unless I win the lottery or something, these are the last updates I will be doing for a while. Hopefully sometime in the future I will be able to continue when I get myself comfortably reestablished.
So far the recordings I have posted on the site are quite remarkable. They prove that budgies are master communicators, capable of learning our language at an extremely fast pace. I believe their ability to learn is to be many times faster than humans. The only thing that holds them back from communicating with us, is our inability to accept their intelligence and take the time to learn how to understand them better. Even though they can learn how to understand us, it is much more difficult for them to reproduce the same vocal patterns as us. As a result, the majority of them are misunderstood and underestimated when they first start talking. This usually causes them to become discouraged and revert to mimicries or just plain old bird talk, instead of talking in context. I believe the reason they revert to mimicries is because this is the only time we acknowledge that we understand them. Hopefully, this study has helped others to learn how to develop their budgies abilities for using context. Even though Victor's recordings were the best examples ever produced for understanding the parrot mind, Betty's recordings have also given me insight about their feelings and emotions. How they adapt to being in captivity is also a very important part of their development and intelligence. A biologist from a university recently told me that if the recordings were real they would be the biggest breakthrough in the animal intelligence field of the century. I do not know why but scientists are still having a hard time believing that Victor’s recordings are a real budgie talking. I know some day soon that this will all be confirmed as other budgies are starting to talk in context as well within my Budgie Research Group. You can join the group by going here or hear some of their recordings on the main page at http://www.budgieresearch.homestead.com
Always remember that even though the scientific community scoffs at my findings now, soon they will be fact. Even though I am not a scientist or educated in a university, I was the first to bring this remarkable insight of the animal mind to the world.
Ryan Reynolds
