Parrot with British Accent Reunited with Owner After Four Years; Now Speaks Spanish

A pet parrot who spoke with a British accent before it disappeared four years ago has been returned to its owner, and it now speaks Spanish.

Nigel, an African grey parrot, lived in Torrance, California, with his British owner Darren Chick before flying away one day in 2010, the Daily Mail reports. He was gone for so long that Chick finally gave up looking for him.

After flying away, Nigel is believed to have lived in the wild around Torrance until a local business owner, Julissa Sperling, found him a few months ago.  

Sperling is a Panamanian who speaks Spanish. She believes that Nigel must have learnt some of her phrases while waiting at the shop.

"He was the happiest bird. He was singing and talking without control. He was barking like the dogs. He was saying, "What happened?" in Spanish," She said.

Sperling tried looking looking for potential owners and came across an ad posted by a Southern Californian veterinarian Teresa Micco.

Micco had been looking for her own African grey parrot and mistook Nigel for her missing bird.

However, after spending some time with it, she realized that it was not her pet parrot. She noticed that Nigel had a microchip and tracked it to Chick in Torrance.

"I introduced myself and said, 'Have you lost a bird?' He initially said, 'No.' But he thought I meant recently," Micco told The Telegraph.  

This is the fifth reunion Micco has facilitated. Her bird, Benjamin, flew out of the coop in February when a door was left open.

Even though Nigel bit him once, the reunion brought tears of joy to Chick's eyes. "He's doing perfect. It's really weird. I knew it was him from the minute I saw him," The Independent reports.