Budgies and canaries Lesson 205 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Budgies, short for budgerigars, are small parrots from the dry grasslands of Australia, where they fly in huge flocks that look like a green cloud. 1 A pet budgie is a flock bird living in a house. 2 That is why a budgie chatters, whistles and bobs its head all day, why it stares into a mirror as if at a friend, and why it is happiest with another budgie beside it. 3 Canaries are small finches whose males are famous for their songs; long ago coal miners carried them underground because a canary showed the effects of bad gas before people noticed it. 4 Small birds have very delicate lungs, need to fly every day and need more than seeds, so a good owner watches them closely: a fluffed-up, quiet bird may be ill. 5 Budgies are very chatty birds that chatter and whistle a lot, and some pet budgies have learnt to say hundreds of words. 6 All wild budgies are green and yellow; the blue, white and other colours were bred in pet budgies. 7 You can usually tell an adult male budgie from a female by the cere, the bare patch above the beak: often blue in males and brown or pale in females; young budgies have stripes on their foreheads that fade as they grow. 8 A budgie staring at itself in a mirror may treat the reflection like another bird, and budgies are happier with a real budgie as a friend. 9 Head-bobbing usually means a budgie is excited or showing off, and it can also be a sign that it wants food. 10 Male canaries sing the most, and coal miners once took canaries underground because the birds were harmed by dangerous gas before the miners noticed it. 11 Birds' lungs are very sensitive, so cooking fumes and smoke can harm them, and fumes from overheated non-stick pans can kill small birds; cages should not be kept in the kitchen. 12 Pet birds need time out of the cage to fly every day in a safe room, with windows and mirrors covered or marked so the bird does not fly into the glass, and other pets kept out. 14 A budgie that sits fluffed up and still for a long time may be ill and needs a vet quickly, because small birds hide illness until they are very sick. 15 A budgie grinding its beak softly at bedtime is usually content and relaxed, and budgies often sleep standing on one leg with the head tucked into the back feathers. ← previous Goldfish and pond fish: the three-second memory mythnext → Parrots: talkers, nutcrackers and long lives↑ back to Biology This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/205-budgies-and-canaries/