What would you say the percentage is for a parrotlet's talking ability? I'm just curious. Does talking come easy for it?
Males are more likely to talk than females are, I don’t really think I can offer a percentage as it is super variable and it’s really more dependent on you than anything. Birds can be taught to mimic and speak on cue through reinforcement and their success in mimicry will come from the trainer’s ability to reinforce the correct behaviours. Largely most parrotlets won’t talk on their own but given the correct reinforcers at the right times a lot of them very likely could (as with any species). There are a lot of birds who can learn to talk independently a lot better than parrotlets but there’s also a lot of individuals who can become very talkative. In general their vocalization isn’t great, it’s super raspy and you really have to know what’s being said to understand it.
Zeeby’s a female but she did learn minimal mimicry all on her own, every time I came to work I’d give her a kiss and eventually she associated the happiness she experienced when I showed up with that kiss sound so she just started doing it on her own one day. In the past she’s made attempts at words, she’ll click to consonants and has tried to say ‘tickle tickle’ in the past but it never really stuck because it just wasn’t reinforcing enough for her. There’s really a lot of variables that go in to teaching a bird to talk and a lot more of it is dependent on the trainer and their ability to make the action of mimicry desirable than anything else.
Overall I’d say they’re not the best, they pick up a couple words here and there and their sounds aren’t all that clear but there are definitely some individual parrotlets that are going to be much more vocal than others.