Roger Vlitos

A Companion Fit for Pirates

Parrot Culture: Our 2,500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most Talkative Bird

By

University of Pennsylvania Press 256pp £19.50 order from our bookshop

In spite of having been bitten by parrots from three continents, I’m still fascinated by them. Parrots tend to possess their owners, not the other way round; and the possessed are prone to prattle like parrots when they write about them. So it’s good to see that an intelligent book about these fabulous but capricious creatures has arrived. Now we can all appreciate them from a safe distance.

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