Mimicking

Hearing birds of the parrot family talk in a voice resembling that of a person's seems almost unreal. This uncanny ability actually is part of their normal life style. Nature tells them to ''follow the leader.'' What their leader does they try hard to do. If a group of birds is sitting on a telephone wire and one flies away, they generally ail fly away. If you've watched ducks in a pond, they stay in a group swimming first in one direction and then another, always staying with the lead duck.

Birds in the wild copy the leader and do things together because experience has taught them that there are survival advantages to living together as one.

Birds seem to enjoy a ''copy cat'' relationship. In a group of birds if one eats a new food, likely the others will follow. In a aviary, a parakeet learned how to swallow air so that his crop greatly distended. He seemed very proud and "showed off" this ability. Soon, other birds in the aviary learned the same trick and were ballooning their crop.

That birds can imitate our speech leaves one impressed and amazed.

Further, watching birds chew gum, untie knots, open cage doors, peel a grape, cough when people cough, say "hello" when we enter a room and "good-bye" when we leave seems beyond their capability, and yet they do all this and much more.

Like ducks in a pond, birds follow the leader.

Birds will only start mimicking our behavior when they feel they are part of our flock. They must look on the person doing the teaching as the leader-and then the game is ''follow the leader.''