For a few years in the late 1980s I bred exotic birds, and bought a pair of wild-caught African Grey Parrots.
Their powers of mimic are legendary, but this was ridiculous.
We almost called for an exorcist when, after the first day we heard cars of my piano students arriving, footsteps on the deck,
knocking on the door-but when my son, Nathan, ran to answer, nobody was there!
My kids were wide-eyed.

Then we heard the school bus arrive, the hiss of brakes, the laughter of their cousins coming to the house..but nobody was there. No bus either.

I noticed these sounds came from incidents that happened the day before, but the times were being heard 15 minutes early.
The dog barked the first time someone seemed to be at the door,
but didn't react again.

I then remembered reading an article by an African Grey Parrot owner who thought she was losing her mind because her parrot was making the sound affects of someone breaking into her house at night, yet her alarm system showed no intruder.

The only way for us to tell if something was real, and not the African Greys, was to look at Fergie, our Toy Fox Terrier.
The mantra in our house became; "It's only the African Greys."

We hung the flight cage under the eaves outside away from us, by the bathroom window, but soon
loud elimination sounds echoed through the house,
as well as entire conversations replayed in the middle of the night..
footsteps running up and down the hall, my kids calling for us at midnight. We could be standing in the the hall and hear the voices and thump of footsteps going past us, like invisible people.

It made my hair stand on end, and when we moved the cage even farther away,
we began hearing conversations being replayed from our neighbors across the road!

One day while my kids were at the neighbors, I heard the parrots replay an entire "conversation" between my 8 yr old son
and a friend discussing smoking by the cellar, and
when my son got home I confronted him. He thought it poor sport to be ratted out by birds.

Eventually, I sold the pair of African Greys to an eager parrot breeder for a high price, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Obviously the macaw is not native, went for a walk to the breach one morning and there he was,
have a similar pic of a kookaburra which also wasn't native as it was taken in Atlanta.

Is the cockatoo native to where you live, or an australian one? & do they fly freely, or do you keep them in an aviary?

My folks just lost their African Grey... She was a seriously sweet bird!

2 cool companions. Is the cocatoo more intense than the african grey? I always think of them as running the show

My best friend had an African Grey growing up. It would do the sound effects from "Electronic Battleship" when we'd play!

Thats awesome! I have my little Boba (Fischers African Lovebird) to keep me company.