Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge
4 May 2023
OUT ON THE MOSS, enjoying the glorious May sunshine, when my musings at the peat bank are interrupted by a lad from Snorvaig who trots across the bog with the latest copy of the Smithsonian Magazine. This is the talk of the community of the island in The Puffer, he says, since it includes an article about a Glasgow University team which has been encouraging lonely parrots to communicate by video link. Everybody is very proud of our local university for being noticed in publications from as far away as Washington DC. One of the company is even interested in parrots (perhaps thinking them edible).
According to the lead researcher, Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, parrots get lonely when kept individually in cages in suburban homes. “Feeling bored and isolated, they may develop psychological issues,” the article says. “Lonely parrots are unhappy parrots.”
The solution Hirskyi-Douglas’s team are investigating is to train parrots to peck a phone screen on a social interaction site which connects them with other lonely parrots. They have found that their subjects soon develop friendships with their preferred interlocutors, just like humans. For some reason, the researchers refer to this sort of relationship as “a reciprocal dynamic.” That seems a rather limited, digitalish phrase for a complex, analogue experience.
Back at my desk after tea, I settle down to write to Dr Hirskyj-Douglas. I see on the Glasgow University website that she “mainly publishes work with her dog, Zack, whom you will see in most of her publications.” I want to know if she has considered extending her work from parrots and dogs to humans, especially those suffering from political “issues”.
For example, I have read of a lady in Uddingston who is so lonely after a lifetime in politics that she has had to take driving lessons just to break the silence of her own misery. Surely she could benefit from experiencing a phone-based “reciprocal dynamic”?
Before she retired from active politics this person, whose name I do not propose to reveal, spent much of her time “parroting” documents which outlined something or other in fields unknown or uninteresting. Repetition was her forte. She never knowingly under-parroted. I wonder if Dr Hirskyj-Douglas would accept her on the University programme as she currently is, L-plate and all? Or would the Uddingston subject have to self-identify as a parrot? If so, what legal formalities are necessary for homo sapiens to change species for innocent friend-finding purposes?
Parrots evolved in Gondwanaland, in an age before parliaments, motorhomes and time-shares in the Algarve. Today, they inhabit warm, happy countries either side of the equator. Many of these have regimes which, though rife with corruption, do allow parroting to go on in the sound-absorbing forest, unchallenged by scowling youngsters in black uniforms who seem to like camping and gardening.
In their own paradise, parrots fly in giant flocks through the jungle and scream at every opportunity. They chew anything which, or anyone who, gets in their way. They are more dangerous than their exotically colourful outfits would suggest. But they can adapt—unlike some ex-politicians with “issues”. They are known, for example, to be able to live quite peaceably in high-end motorhomes, so long as their cage is open and transparent, and someone else cleans up the shit.
In-cage parrots relieve stress by pecking cuttle-fish bones. Give a parrot a bone and surprising things can happen. Apparently another Uddingston resident, a Mr Peter Murrell (58), has a parrot that can say, “I’ll do what’s best for Scotland.” From the photographs I have seen, there is no obvious similarity between Mr Murrell and a cuttle-fish.
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The funniest thing I have read recently is in the second volume of Bevis Hillier’s biography of John Betjeman, which I am re-enjoying in bed at the moment. It makes an amusing relaxation from my current research project, which is into the mating habits of Homo Uddingstonius.
When Betjeman lived in Uffington – no connection with Uddingston – a neighbour and friend was Lord Berners, the well-known inter-war musician and writer. Having been brought up by an absent father (Royal Navy) and a stupid, prejudiced, domineering grandmother (due to his mother’s unreliability), he evolved into one of Britain’s more outrageously gay millionaires.
He had a clavichord in his Rolls-Royce and dyed his pigeons yellow and pink. According to Hillier, “He drew moustaches on photographs of royalty and played the piano with his bottom.” (p. 17)
He was especially good at Chopin’s Funeral March, apparently, which Betjeman found screamingly funny. His Lordship’s boyfriend, Robert Heber Percy, who witnessed these performances, said Berners played “a large range of chords a posteriori.”
I wonder if Mr Murrell’s parrot can play the piano in this way and, if so, who showed it how to do so?
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Hamish Gobson lives on the Hebridean isle of Great Todday (Todaidh Mór) and features in Nicola Sturgeon: the Years of Ascent (1970-2007) – A Citizen’s Biography of a Driven Woman in a Drifting Parliament (Ian Mitchell, 2022) – available on Amazon.co.uk and also reviewed here by Tom Gallagher.
Also written by Ian Mitchell is The Justice Factory (second edition): Can the Rule of Law Survive in Twenty-First Century Scotland? which considers the future of liberal democracy, taking Scotland as an example.
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Photo of four Macaw by Naypong Studio from Adobe stock
