Parrots removed from wildlife park after swearing at visitors

‘One swears, one laughs and before you know it, it’s like an old working men’s club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing’

Five newly adopted parrots at a wildlife park in Lincolnshire have been temporarily removed from public view after they began swearing at visitors.

The bawdy birds became residents at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park on 15 August, and taught each other obscenities while quarantined together in the same room, said the park’s chief executive.

Steve Nichols said the swearing made staff around the park laugh, but this only encouraged the five African grey parrots to keep going.

He told Lincolnshire Live  the park had previously taken in parrots “that have sometimes had a bit of blue language” and it is “very comical”.

“But, just by coincidence, we took in five in the same week and because they were all quarantined together, it meant that one room was just full of swearing birds,” he said.

“The more they swear the more you usually laugh which then triggers them to swear again.

“But when you get four or five together that have learned the swearing and naturally learnt the laughing, so when one swears, one laughs and before you know it, it just got to be like an old working men’s club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing.”

The park put the birds out on display when it reopened after the coronavirus lockdown, but it didn’t take long for the birds to start lobbing obscenities at returning visitors.

“Literally within 20 minutes of being in the introductory we were told that they had sworn at a customer and for the next group of people, all sorts of obscenities came out,” said Mr Nichols.

He said although the customers had seen the funny side of the situation, they made the decision to withdraw the foul-mouthed flock from public view as a weekend was coming up and there would be children present.

The parrots have been placed in an “off-shore enclosure” surrounded by other parrots, and the park hopes the other noises will have a good influence on the blue birds. The park is home to 1,500  parrots.

They will be released in separate areas so if they do let out profanities, “it is not as bad as three or four of them all blasting it out at once”.

The pandemic has hit the park hard, but the swearing parrots have been a source of laughter and light relief for the staff during what has been a “real rough year”, Mr Nichols said.

He added the charity is set to lose between £30,000 to £40,000 this year, but the chief executive said staff remain “eternal optimists” and “have to keep moving forward”.

And the five foul-mouthed birds are not the only parrots at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park who seem to enjoy entertaining visitors. 

Footage of a Chico, a a nine-year-old yellow-crowned amazon parrot, singing Beyoncé’s ”If I Were a Boy” went viral on social media earlier this month.