Swearing parrots moved enclosures to help stop their bad language

Sheila is one of the eight sweary parrots

A group of cheeky parrots who became famous for saying inappropriate words to visitors at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park are being moved in the hope it will stop them from swearing.

Recently keepers noticed that three more birds had picked up the bad language from the original five African grey parrots.

Now, Billy, Tyson, Eric, Jade, and Elsie, as well as Eric, Captain, and Sheila will be moved into a different enclosure with up to 100 other parrots.

Keepers hope the parrots' swearing will be drowned out by the noise of the other birds.

The park's chief executive Steve Nichols says he thinks the high-risk strategy might work, or "we could end up with 100 swearing parrots on our hands. Only time will tell".

Parrots are intelligent birds who can learn and copy all sorts of different sounds, like car alarms and other animal calls, as well as words.

In the wild they live in big groups called colonies and tend to copy each other's sounds as a sort of call and response.

The keepers at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park hope the eight naughty parrots will end up copying the other birds calls when they're moved into the new enclosure, instead of the other way around.

However, Mr Nicols, who has worked with parrots for about 35 years said: "Once it's in their vocabulary, it's usually there for good."

But, he thinks there might be a chance the birds will "imitate other sounds as well", making their swearing less frequent.

The disclaimer notice on the swearing parrots' enclosure at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park

The five original parrots moved into the park in 2020, and since then their keepers have had to put up signs around their enclosure saying: "We cannot be responsible for what you hear."

The parrots were given a time-out for a few months to see if that would help them to stop swearing, but it didn't work.

Lincolnshire Wildlife Park is home to the UK's largest collection of parrots, with about 2,000 of the birds on site.