Picton man’s plea for missing parrot

‘‘I probably wasn’t all the way down the steps when she took off . . . it just seemed as though she suddenly thought ‘there’s my utopia.’’

Picton residents have been warned to keep an eye out for an escaped parrot desperate for a leak.

Darryl Jones was stepping outside of his Picton home on Saturday when Fonz the African grey parrot took flight off his shoulder.

‘‘I probably wasn’t all the way down the steps when she took off . . . it just seemed as though she suddenly thought ‘there’s my utopia!’’’ Jones said.

Although African grey parrots are considered very intelligent birds, Jones was concerned for Fonz’s survival in the wild and wondered if she could find her way home.

‘‘I imagine she’s quite traumatised because everything’s a very new experience and sometimes they don’t quite know how to come down,’’ he said.

‘‘If I was up there in a hot air balloon or something, I would have a hell of a lot of trouble finding my own backyard and I’ve lived here for 42 years.’’

Birds have been keeping Jones company since his mother passed away in 1983.

His first, a cockatoo, lived to be nearly 30 and was swiftly followed by three African greys, all called Fonz.

Jones said he loved African grey because they were ‘‘magic talkers’’ and ‘‘good company’’.

Fonz the third had an excellent vocabulary, Jones said, and her latest phrase was ‘‘I need to go to the toilet’’.

‘‘I said to the neighbour ‘if you hear someone up in the tree saying they want to go to the toilet, let them in, because it will probably be my bird’.

‘‘She’ll sometimes sit in the cage there or on my shoulder and she’ll just go for 10 minutes, just yak yak yak, straight through her vocabulary.

‘‘Often when I come out in the morning she always hears the door open, and I’ll say ‘Hello Fonz’ and she’ll say ‘G’day Darryl’.’’

He said the birds had become very important to him after the loss of his mother.

‘‘It’s just nice to have something alive in the house with you, and I think you need something you have to look after, otherwise you’ve got nothing you have to do.’’

‘‘I’m going to be pretty lost for a long time, it’s going to be pretty difficult.’’

Jones said Fonz should be able to cope with the weather, but would struggle without food and could become prey to a hawk.

Picton residents are asked to keep an eye, and ear, out for Fonz.

BRYA INGRAM/ STUFF Darryl Jones misses the "good company" of Fonz, his African grey parrot.