Ryan founded The Budgie Research Group in February of 2001. During his research,
he has spent several thousand hours analyzing budgie recordings and researching
talking parakeets. His talking parakeet named Victor, had a estimated vocabulary
of over 1000 words and documented vocabulary of over 800 words. He was the
first parakeet to actually prove it could talk in context. Currently, he has four budgies
with vocabularies that range from 100 to 400 words.
Ryan's ability to understand the recordings came from ten years in the Canadian Armed Forces.
During that time, he worked in the radio operations field and developed a knack for morse code.
He was also extensively involved in picking up and acurately transcribing to paper, garbled
voice communications over long distances. He has been featured on Tech TV, Coast to Coast
Radio Network and in Species Link Magazine as an expert in budgie intelligence and speech.
Ryan also founded and created the parrotresearch.com website and all it's related websites.
Currently this group of websites are the largest parrot intelligence websites in the world
and provide detailed information on parrot intelligence, backed up with hundreds of audio
recordings and videos.
Terri Crane
Terri Crane has been with The Budgie Research Group for nearly one year. She
has spent approximately, 500 hours listening to and analyzing budgie recordings.
One of her original talking budgies, Piccolo, had a vocabulary of
more than several hundred words, making her one of the leading parrot
speech analysts in the world. She's also a member of the BRG Psittalinguistics
Committee and the coordinator for BRG Budgie Awareness Community.
Terri's free flying flock consists of a Crimson Rosella, two Cockatiels,
who arealso learning the English language and four Budgies. Piccolo's mate,
Fiore, learned much of her language from Piccolo and listening to the
recordings in the Budgie Research Group. Terri is currently training her
newest flock members, Skittles, Lollypop and Sky.
She was an accomplished Dancer and Choreographer by the age of 18.
She also won countless awards in Baton Twirling. After a two year stay
in New York City, excelling in her craft, she returned to Baltimore
to be the featured Dancer in The Gatsby Review. She also founded and taught
The Baltimore Bird Majorette and Drum Corps, as well as The Baltimore
Starliners, Baltimore's 40 girl chorus line.
After retiring from dancing, she entered the field of law enforcement,
first as a medic and 911 dispatcher and then as a corrections officer
at a jail on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She's also an advanced open water
rescue diver and certified as a Firefighter.
She feels that her training as a 911 dispatcher has helped her
to understand her budgie's fast paced speech. This is due to hours
of listening to radio communications in hectic emergency situations.
She is currently a senior reviewer for Linear Reflections Magazine,
and has written two novels with one in progress, that is about talking animals!
Terri currently resides in Brussels.
Sarah Cordish B.A., M.A., mathematics
Sarah Cordish has been with The Budgie Research Group since 2001.
She has spent approximately 400 hours listening to and analyzing
budgie recordings.
Her talking budgie, Herbert, has an estimated vocabulary of more
than a thousand words. Her other talking budgie, Binky,
has a estimated vocabulary of more than several hundred words,
making her one of the leading parrot speech trainers analyst in the
world.
Sarah's flock consists of (about) 150 budgies, 100 pigeons,
20 canaries, 20 Gouldian finches, four sparrows, four cockatiels,
and two zebra finches. She has been an active aviculturist for the
last 15 years, breeding budgies, canaries, finches, cockatiels,
and pigeons. Currently she is hand-feeding four other 2004 budgie
hens to hopefully train them as talkers.
Other accomplishments are a former equestrienne and horse trainer,
having ridden and shown saddle seat, hunter seat, and Western.
She trained her own three-gaited and five-gaited horses.
She is a musician, playing bassoon and oboe in a local orchestra.
She paints oil paintings and is a published artist.
Recently she finished a diploma course in homoeopathy, which she
uses to treat her bird and people flock.
Carol Mundt
Carol Mundt and her budgie Joey Smarty-Pants have been with the Budgie
Research Group since January. She see's herself as a humble person who
fights for the rights of others, human, budgie, all life.
Her interests include ecology, anthropology, animal behaviour, ancient
belief systems and how to make the world a better place for all beings.
In her career as a civil servant, for 26 years, she has found that
her training has helped her to read body language and behavioural patterns.
She is also a member of the Psittalinguistics Committee.
Carol describes her happiest moments as being her garden and with her
budgie Joey Smarty-pants. She shares with us, “I have learned a lot from him
about: humbleness, patience, spirituality and kindness.
Diana Rogers
Diana and her little Budgie Mr. Abbey have been working together to learn to
understand each other, as members of the Psittalinguistics committee.
Diana's career has been the the medical field most of her adult life,
working for a family physician, as a medical office assistant. She now
does part-time work from her home as a medical transcriptionist and
also part-time work at a retirement residence in the Activation Department.
She shares that she was not able to have children; so needless
to say, her pets get a lot of attention. Diana is the proud owner
of a 17 year old cat named Dusty and of course, Mr. Abbey, the talking
budgie.
She's been a foster-mom for puppies, as well as helping a well known
dog trainer in the area where she lives, in the rescue of abused
puppies. They would live with Diana, anywhere from two days
to two weeks, until she placed them. Diana hopes to try and
to do this again in the near future. Her enthusiasm extends to her
enjoyment of pets, crafts, walking, just to mention a few hobbies.
She now adds translating budgies to the list!
Michelle Williamson
Michelle is 40 years old and resides in the UK. When she was a child her household was always
full of animals, cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, fish and of course budgies. Michelle, or Shelly,
as the BRG knows her, aquired her very own budgie in 1983. She named him Joey. Joey lived
with her for 10 years, was an excellent talker and so much fun to have around. Next came Harry
who is now 11 and Cilla, who was a rescued budgie. Cilla died recently at age 5. It was when
Cilla began to lay eggs that Michelle first became interested in breeding budgies. Unfortunately
because of Harry's advancing years, the eggs were never fertile but by this time Michelle was
so hooked on breeding these wonderful little critters, that she decided to build a birdroom by
the garden.
Her birdroom is 10' x 6'6. It has an ouside flight, an inside flight and a bank of 9 breeding
cages. In addition, there is also a stock cage in which to place youngsters. They stay there
until their first moult, then they go into the main flight with the adult birds. Shelly's very first
breeding season was a great success. She put up only 3 pairs which resulted in 18 eggs, all
fertile. Two chicks died shortly after hatching and one at three weeks of age. The end result
though, was 15 healthy chicks, not bad for a first attempt.
Shelly shares that her main interest is Crested budgies. “I just love them.” She has a
few pairs of exhibition budgies, but is using these to improve her Crests. Shelly also breeds the
Dominant Pied, Spangle (both green and blue series) Opaline, Cinnamon, Yellowface, Dilute
(Pastel), Rainbows and of course Crests. Her aviary has all colours, but her favourite is the Violets.
Budgerigar genetics is a complicated business. Shelly reads daily, trying to improve
her knowledge in this area but still says that she has a great deal to learn.
"There is always something new to investigate and alot of my knowledge has come from
asking questions. Never feel afraid to ask a question no matter how silly you think it may be,
you might be surprised at the answer. I work from home so I have alot of time I can spend
on my 'hobby' of breeding budgerigars and, looking after my various other pets. I don't portray
myself to be an expert on budgerigar breeding but from the knowledge I have gained over the
years I hope to be able to help answer any questions that you may have."
