Animal Talk

We spent a lovely afternoon with friends.
It was their first visit to our new home and we guided them around the house, followed (except upstairs) by our two dogs.

Once in the drawing room we chatted about many things and had a good time.
The conversation seemed very interesting to our crow ‘Caro’ who replied in his own crowy way.
Like all crows he loves noise, no matter what and my voice is certainly a noise he loves very much as he always replies in his own language.

One of the conversation items with our friends was “do animals talk to each other”
Yes, they do. We all know and understand that a species of a breed recognizes the sound and signals of another species of the same breed.
Dogs understand other dogs, cats understand cats, crows other crows etc. etc.
And not only the sound but also the body language.

But for example, do birds talk, really talk, to dogs, dogs to cats, cats to birds etc? And now I am not talking about body language but with “words”. Well, they do at our home!

Caro loves visitors, they are “noisy”, they are interested in him, talk to him, laugh.

Caro lives completely voluntarily, in a big parrot cage full of toys and bells.
Or outside the cave. On top of it, to be precise. From there he flies around, sits on the windowsill and dominates the cats and dogs when they come too close. If all the animals respect Caro’s rules, everybody lives happily together.

From his cage he has a perfect view to the entrée of the garden to the house.
If any visitor, Caro spots him/her immediately and happily announces the person with a special sound. Very convenient for us because being in the kitchen at the back of the house, we are aware of visitors before they ring the doorbell.
But also the dogs learned to recognise this sound which means that they raise their ears and softly yell (if we are lucky! Especially Dée is known to be a good barker). No one can ever enter the property without being noticed!

Silly enough Caro also developed the same interest and almost…. almost the same signal for big agricultural machines! Nice when you live in an agricultural area….
But dogs and we, learn to recognize the different tone! Animal talk….