(Image: James Turner/Lincolnshire Live)
The infamous five foul-mouthed parrots have returned to a public enclosure at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park.
A group of African Grey parrots began to receive a lot of attention in 2020 after their swearing and obscenities were noticed by members of staff.
Billy, Tyson, Eric, Jade and Elsie have all now been put back into public view and the chief executive officer of the park, Steve Nichols, said they are doing well.
He said: “We had them offshore for a number of months and in that time we integrated them with about 15 more African Greys who had different vocal abilities.
“We hoped that they would learn from what they heard repetitively over time.
“Some of these parrots are exceptional talkers so the plan was that they would pick up some of their good words.
“Sadly it’s not really happened that way.”
(Image: James Turner/Lincolnshire Live)
All of the five parrots come from five separate homes across the UK such as Scotland and Essex and were originally pets.
Mr Nichols said: “Billy might swear, and then Tyson will laugh, and then Eric will swear and Jade will laugh.
“People have demanded that they get put on show so we’ve stopped worrying.
“I think we will have more problems with people swearing than parrots swearing.”
He added: “There’s a warning there if people don’t want to stand there.
“We’ve had enough of the dark world with Covid so it brings some lightheartedness.”
(Image: James Turner/Lincolnshire Live)
Mr Nichols also explained why he thinks the parrots may have picked up the swearing in the first place.
He said: “99% of people when they have a parrot try to get it to say or do something unusual and swear words are by far the most common.
“When you swear you say it in a certain context which is similar every time and it gives the parrots a way of tuning in and repeating it.
“When they do repeat it, naturally people laugh because they find it really amusing, not realising that they’re giving the parrot license to do it as much as possible.”
The Boston park opened in 2003 and is home to over 1,500 parrots.
I certainly would visit the Park to see those lovely birds. They seem to be having fun and amusing the public , so why hide them ?